A Fortress of Bureaucracy

How Tom Ridge's Department of Homeland Security plans to make us safe

by Briana Olson

Asa Hutchinson, Undersecretary of Homeland Security, says the "new and unprecedented dangers" of the 21st century necessitate "a 'virtual border' that operates far beyond the land of the United States."

But to date, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempts to secure America's borders have had little success in the apprehension of terrorists, have resulted in a large downturn in the number of refugees coming to the US, and have caused discriminatory disruption of the lives of a number of US residents from Muslim countries.

Since 1996, legislation has required that arriving seekers of asylum be detained until they prove their safeness for the community. Bill Strassberger of the Bureau of Citizenship Services, now a DHS office, says the average length of detention is four to five weeks, the average wait to present a case to an immigration judge is five months, and the average asylum case, including appeals, lasts one to two years. Under the recent "Operation Liberty Shield", a recent wartime measure, asylum seekers arriving from 33 Muslim nations, as well as Gaza and the West Bank, were to be detained for the duration of their asylum proceedings, usually one or two years. While 15 of some 42 asylum seekers detained under this law had criminal records, none were found to be terrorists.

Since the Operation terminated on April 17, those who clear background checks should now be eligible for parole (in other words, they won't automatically be detained while awaiting their asylum judgement).

Refugee resettlement, complicated by involvement of both the State Department and the DHS, has dramatically decreased as a result of time-consuming FBI and CIA security checks. According to the Office of Migration and Refugee Services of the United States Catholic Conference, fewer than 7000 refugees arrived in the first five months of this fiscal year.

Unlike asylum seekers, refugees flee their native country and apply for resettlement to a third country. Asylum seekers apply for legal status in the country to which they have fled.

"Frank", an aid worker based in Africa who wished to remain anonymous, attributes the continuing lull of refugee resettlement to pending security checks and the recent US evacuation from Kenya. The increased threat in Kenya has resulted in the departure of US immigration officers, and 11,000 Somali Bantus in Kakuma can not be interviewed until the return of the officers.

Still, Frank says things are moving forward. 1500 of the 13,000 Bantus expected to come to the U.S were approved last fall, and security checks are beginning to clear for some of the 18,000 refugees living in Nairobi. Bob Johnson, director of the Seattle and Tukwila branches of the International Rescue Committee, believes the US will streamline security and continue accepting a diversity of refugees.

Despite his general optimism Johnson does not predict resettlement will return to normal by the year's close. Cindy Koser of the Refugee Assistance Program in South Seattle said her agency's projected resettlement for 2003 was cut in half. Koser commented that the disorganization in implementing new screening systems has led her to question the US commitment to helping refugees. "Refugees are the most scrutinized people that come here," she noted. "The people that caused all of this fear had nothing to do with the refugee process."

The special registration program for US residents from Muslim countries, which was started during the overhaul of the Immigration and Naturalization Services, required males from certain countries to visit immigration to be fingerprinted and interviewed. Civil liberties groups criticized the program for targeting individuals from Muslim nations and contributing to fear in Muslim-American communities.

Because the interviews duplicated information already known to immigration, participants questioned the program's effectiveness. In Seattle, some alleged visa violations and petty crime were detected, but no terrorist charges resulted from the program. (Editor's note: at least one area resident was detained for allegedly not sending an address change to Immigration in a timely manner. He was given a choice between indefinite detention or return to his home country. He chose the latter. He had lived and worked in Seattle for seven years.)

To streamline immigration processes in the future, the DHS plans to develop US VISIT (short for US Visit and Immigrant Status Indication Technology), a reportedly flawless screening system relying on a massive database of visitor and intelligence data. US VISIT will require visa-carrying visitors to be fingerprinted and checked against a list of terrorists and criminals when they enter the country. If US VISIT, expected to cost a minimum of $800 million over the next two years, is installed in airports and seaports by the year's end, as Tom Ridge has promised, it will likely improve the enforcement of immigration law. Less certain is whether it will deter future terrorists or "replace fear with knowledge", as Asa Hutchinson hopes.