From the Dec. 19 LATimes:

Hundreds Are Detained After Visits to INS

Thousands protest arrests of Mideast boys and men who complied with order to register.

By Megan Garvey, Martha Groves and Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writers

Hundreds of men and boys
from Middle Eastern countries were arrested by federal immigration officials
in Southern California this week when they complied with orders to appear
at INS offices for a special registration program.

    The arrests drew thousands of people to demonstrate Wednesday in Los Angeles.

    Immigration
and Naturalization Service spokesmen refused Wednesday to say how many
people the agency had detained, what the specific charges were or how many
were still being held. But officials speaking anonymously said they would
not dispute estimates by lawyers for detainees that the number across Southern
California was 500 to 700. In Los Angeles, up to one-fourth of those who
showed up to register were jailed, lawyers said.

    The number
of people arrested in this region appears to have been considerably larger
than elsewhere in the country, perhaps because of the size of the Southland’s
Iranian population. Monday’s registration deadline applied to males 16
and older from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Men from 13 other nations,
mostly in the Mideast and North Africa, are required to register next month.

    Many
of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for
green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near
future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their
clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following
the regulations closely.

    “These
are the people who’ve voluntarily gone” to the INS, said Mike S. Manesh
of the Iranian American Lawyers Assn. “If they had anything to do with
terrorism, they wouldn’t have gone.”

    Immigration
officials acknowledged Wednesday that many of those taken into custody
this week have status-adjustment applications pending that have not yet
been acted on.

    “The
vast majority of people who are coming forward to register are currently
in legal immigration status,” said local INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice.
“The people we have taken into custody … are people whose non-immigrant
visas have expired.”

    The large
number of Iranians among the detainees has angered many in the area’s Iranian
communities, who organized a demonstration Wednesday at the federal building
in Westwood.

    At
the rally, which police officials estimated drew about 3,000 protesters
at its peak, signs bore such sentiments as “What Next? Concentration Camps?”
and “Detain Terrorists Not Innocent Immigrants.”

    The arrests
have generated widespread publicity, mostly unfavorable, in the Middle
East, said Khaled Dawoud, a correspondent for Al Ahram, one of Egypt’s
largest dailies. He questioned State Department official Charlotte Beers
about the detentions Wednesday after a presentation she made at the National
Press Club in Washington. Egyptians are not included in the registration
requirement.

    Beers,
undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs, was presenting
examples of a U.S. outreach campaign for the Middle East, which includes
images of Muslims leading happy lives here. Dawoud asked how that image
squared with the “humiliating” arrests in recent days.

    “I don’t
think there is any question that the change in visa policy is going to
be seen by some as difficult and, indeed — what was the word you used?
— humiliating,” Beers said. But, she added, President Bush has said repeatedly
that he considers “his No. 1 … job to be the protection of the American
people.”

    Relatives
and lawyers of those arrested locally challenge that rationale for the
latest round of detentions.

    One
attorney, who said he saw a 16-year-old pulled from the arms of his crying
mother, called it madness to believe that the registration requirements
would catch terrorists.

    “His
mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going
to come home — she is losing her mind,” said attorney Soheila Jonoubi,
who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting
to determine the status of her clients.

    Jonoubi
said that the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband,
the boy’s stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country
in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence,
the lawyer said.

    Many
objected to the treatment of those who showed up for the registration.
INS ads on local Persian radio stations and in other ethnic media led many
to expect a routine procedure. Instead, the registration quickly became
the subject of fear as word spread that large numbers of men were being
arrested.

    Lawyers
reported crowded cells with some clients forced to rest standing up, some
shackled and moved to other locations in the night, frigid conditions in
jail cells — all for men with no known criminal histories.

    Shawn
Sedaghat, a Sherman Oaks attorney, said he and his partner, Michelle Taheripour,
represent more than 40 people who voluntarily went to register and were
detained.

    Some,
he said, were hosed down with cold water before finding places to sleep
on the concrete floors of cells.

    Lucas
Guttentag, who heads the West Coast office of the American Civil Liberties
Union’s immigrant rights project, fears the wave of arrests is “a prelude
to much more widespread arrests and deportations.”

    “The
secrecy gives rise to obvious concerns about what the INS is doing and
whether people’s rights are being respected and whether the problems that
arose in the aftermath of 9/11 are being repeated now,” he said.

    Many
at Wednesday’s protest said they took the day off work to join the rally,
because they were shocked by the treatment.

    “I
came to this country over 40 years ago and got drafted in the Army, and
I thought if I die it’s for a good cause, defending freedom, democracy
and the Constitution,” said George Hassan, 65, from the San Fernando Valley.

    “Oppressed
people come here because of that democracy, that freedom, that Constitution.
Now our president has apparently allowed the INS vigilantes to step outside
the Constitution.”

   
Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California,
called the detentions doubly disturbing because “a lot of the Iranians
are Jews who fled Iran because of persecution, and now they are undergoing
similar persecution here…. This is just terrible.”

    Attorney
Ban Al-Wardi, who saw 14 of her 20 clients arrested when she went with
them to the registration, said that although everyone understands the need
to protect the nation against terrorist attacks, the government’s recent
action went too far.

    “All
of our fundamental civil rights have been violated by these actions,” she
said. “I don’t know how far this is going to go before people start speaking
up. This is a very dangerous precedent we are setting. What’s to stop Americans
from being treated like this when they travel overseas?”