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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31ASYL.html?tntemail0

THE DETAINEES
Groups Fault Rule on Automatic Detention
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and ADAM LIPTAK

The Bush administration's decision to detain people from Iraq and 32 other countries who are seeking political asylum in the United States has raised concerns among United Nations officials and immigration groups, who say such blanket detentions may violate international norms and could undercut America's traditional role as a beacon for the oppressed.

Homeland Security Department officials said that the decision, made right before the war in Iraq, was a precaution to keep terrorists from slipping into the United States, the latest in a series of steps to tighten monitoring of foreigners since the Sept. 11 attacks. They pointed to several cases in which terrorists came to this country through asylum applications, particularly Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian sheik who was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to blow up the United Nations headquarters and other landmarks in New York.

But critics, including some former top immigration officials, say they fear that policies governing asylum in the United States, the world's most powerful magnet for refugees, are being weakened in the administration's move to treat immigration as more of a national security issue than a social and demographic one.

The change in asylum rules, announced on March 17 by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, is part of Operation Liberty Shield, which includes heightened security patrols at points of entry and in major cities, and F.B.I. interviews with more than 11,000 Iraqi-born people in this country. People who enter the United States seeking asylum from
countries on a list of those where Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups are known to operate will now be automatically detained while their applications are considered, a process that takes six months or more. Before, asylum-seekers were held beyond an initial screening only on a case-by-case basis.

Only about 600 refugees from the 33 countries, mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, passed initial screenings for asylum at the border last year. Given the added security after the Sept. 11 attacks, many of them were detained.

The department, however, has generated confusion by refusing to identify publicly the countries covered under the new detention rule, citing law enforcement and diplomatic sensitivities.

Civil rights groups have pieced together the list through informal contacts with government officials. They contend that even if only a relatively few people are affected directly, the change could send a chilling message to tens of thousands of refugees all over the world, some of whom have been fighting to come to the United States for years.

"It's clearly ironic that on the eve of a war to liberate the Iraqi people, we are telling people that those fleeing tyranny there will be deprived of their liberty for extended periods when they arrive here," said Eleanor Acer, the director of the asylum program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, in New York.

United Nations officials reacted swiftly to the new policy. In a letter to American authorities, Ruud Lubbers, the United Nations' high commissioner for refugees, said, "The tendency to link asylum seekers and refugees to terrorism is a dangerous and erroneous one." The United Nations has long suggested that it is wrong to arbitrarily detain refugees.

Doris Meissner, the federal immigration commissioner from 1993 to 2000, said the change was similar to other blanket policies imposed by the Bush administration. After the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 1,200 people from Arab countries were detained on immigration violations, and the administration required most of the deportation hearings to be held in
secret rather than allowing immigration judges to decide whether the secrecy was warranted.

"There is a propensity in this administration to establish blanket policies that prejudge guilt based on country of origin," said Ms. Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "Those countries of origin are all Arab or Muslim countries, and it's sending the wrong message," she added. "It is not improving our safety and security because it's too blunt an instrument, and it feeds a view of the United States abroad that we are simply against, and are going to do everything we can to harm, people in and around the Middle East."
Homeland Security officials countered that there had been at least three examples of terrorists who were in the United States under the cover of asylum applications. William Strassberger, a spokesman for the immigration services within the department, said that aside from Mr. Rahman, they included Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two employees of the Central Intelligence Agency outside the agency's headquarters in 1993, and Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, who was convicted on 1997 charges of plotting to bomb New York subways.

"You see what a quandary this places us in," Mr. Strassberger said. "We feel strongly that we want to preserve the ability of people to seek refuge here. But at the same time, we have to protect the public, and we do have heightened concerns about individuals coming from some specific countries."

"The thinking is that we don't know who they are," he added. "So although we will detain them while we find that out, there will be no change in their ability to come here and file a claim of asylum."

David A. Martin, who was the general counsel for the immigration service during the Clinton administration, also said the new policy might be appropriate. "A categorical deterrence policy is in general a legitimate rationale," Mr. Martin said. "In a time of war and a time of risk, to impose it by nationality is defensible."

The latest change comes after nearly a decade of government efforts to tighten the asylum process. The early 1990's had a surge in asylum requests after word spread that work permits were available to anyone who applied for asylum. Since immigration officials dropped that promise in 1995, the number of asylum requests has fallen to 65,000 a year from 150,000.

The new detention rule applies only to people arriving at a border or point of entry, not to refugees already in the United States.

In the past, once people filed asylum applications at the border, officials held them for at least two days while conducting a relatively cursory screening to see if they had a credible fear of persecution. Most applicants passed that test and then could ask to be released while their cases were studied further.
Mr. Strassberger estimated that 80 percent of the people who passed the screening were released within 90 days. But the Lawyers Committee found that even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the release rate was actually 10 percent to 40 percent.

One Sudanese woman, who said she had fled to the United States to escape slavery that she lived under in Kenya for 14 years, said she was handcuffed, placed in leg shackles and paraded through the Newark International Airport after she filed for asylum in November 2001.

The woman said she spent five months of the first cold winter she had ever known at a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., with one light blanket and little hot water. Guards who were women watched when she showered.

"You almost get suicidal in those facilities," said the woman, who was not released until her asylum request was approved.
"It is a hard choice, being treated like really hard-core criminals."

The Lawyers Committee says the 33 countries included in the new rule are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Palestinian asylum seekers from Gaza and the West Bank will also face automatic detention.

Given Mr. Hussein's oppressive regime, Iraqi refugees typically have gained asylum more easily than other people. Still, one Iraqi woman who requested asylum before the recent rule change said she feared that the heightened scrutiny could have a spinoff effect and lead to delays in approving her application and those of other people from the Middle East.

Referring to the automatic detention of new applicants, the woman, who was once jailed for a month in Iraq, said, "That's horrible. It's not much different than what I went though in Baghdad."

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