Red Flag guys!
Immigrants from a number of Middle Eastern countries are being arrested after coming forward voluntarily to register with the INS.
These people are being treated like as any other criminal suspect while in custody. They have been hosed down before having to sleep on the floor (if there’s room) or forced to sleep standing up. (Yeah, I know, even criminal suspects shouldn’t be treated like that, but that’s another story…)
Now these innocents may be sent away to a jail or internment facility elsewhere — to be further processed because of the overcrowded living conditions in the Jail they are currently being held in. Their lawyers and loved ones aren’t being told when or to where exactly they are to be moved.
These people have committed no crime except that of being a citizen of the country they are from.
This is way to close for comfort to the WWII roundups of Japanese-Americans from 1942-1944.
When Our Government Freaked Out — and went around rounding up and imprisoning Japanese-Americans in “internment camps” in locations across the country.
I’m not sure yet what it is exactly we can do to help these people, but I’m going to do my best to find out.
We’re not going to make let them wait two years like the Japanese had to wait, are we?
Note: There was a big protest (3,000+ people) about this in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.
Here’s story by Megan Garvey, Martha Groves and Henry Weinstein (with Greg Krikorian, Teresa Watanabe, Johanna Neuman and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar) for the L.A. Times:
Hundreds Are Held After Visits to INS
Mideast boys and men living in the Southland were complying with an order to register

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…
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.”
…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