2002-12-23 10:59 a.m.
Is it 2002 or 1942?
I know this is such a pre-Christmas downer, but this story really upset me.
Brief summary: The INS is asking men born in the usual list of enemy nations (mostly Middle Eastern ones) to come by their offices to check in and get fingerprinted, per the terms of our lovely new Homeland Security Act, in what was supposed to be a strictly voluntary program. In a bait and switch, many of the men who showed up at Los Angeles' INS offices for this "voluntary" check were instead arrested, trucked out to the desert and back, and reportedly mistreated while being held.
Many of these men had recently been told their legal status was fine. Their families had no idea what had happened to them or when they might be released, if ever. (The few that weren't arrested notified the families of those who were, because no one else was going to do it.) Some are as young as 16.
I have no problem with asking immigrants to conform to immigration laws. I do have a problem with specific groups being singled out for enforcement. I have a problem with honest people being imprisoned under false pretenses. (Come on, do they really think a terrorist would show up and register voluntarily?) And I have a huge problem with the fact that, only a few years after the government paid Japanese Americans reparations for rounding them up into camps in World War Two, we apparently haven't learned a damn thing.