Fiasco in the Making

By the end of today, all men who are temporarily resident in the United States and who hail from 13 countries deemed to be potential sponsors of terrorism or sources of terrorists must register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Natives of the 13 countries — Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen — between the ages of 16 and 45 will be fingerprinted, photographed and told to present their visa documents for inspection. This registration procedure is consistent with rules now applied to new visa applicants from those countries. In the context of the war on terrorism, it is not illegitimate to pay extra attention to citizens of countries that may harbor terrorists.

Nevertheless, both the efficacy of the procedure — what will the INS learn and how will the information be used? — and the wisdom of treating law-abiding and largely pro-American foreigners like criminals are debatable, particularly since the precedents are not good. Indeed, the INS so comprehensively bungled the first round of registrations last month — for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan — that this time around its credibility as a legitimate player in the war on terrorism is at stake. In advance of that first registration deadline, on Dec. 16, the INS issued confusing and contradictory instructions to its employees, creating chaos on the ground. In some INS offices, only one person was available to register thousands of people. Some of the foreign residents were allowed to register in the company of their attorneys, while others were not. Worse, during the course of registering potential terrorists, INS offices in Southern California decided to arrest, handcuff and detain several hundred men and boys, accusing them of immigration violations. Many were in the process of applying for permanent residency status and had a legal right to be in the country. Some were detained simply because local INS offices, overwhelmed by the numbers, failed to complete the registration process before the close of the business day. Others were detained thanks to the general confusion: One, for example, was an Iranian-born Canadian citizen who was initially informed that he didn't have to register but then was arrested for registering late when he stopped by an INS office to check. Some of those arrested were kept for more than three days in detention centers without bedding or a change of clothes, before being transferred to jails.

Confused about its own policies, the INS also gave out confusing information to others. Neither in the run-up to the December deadline nor in the past two weeks did the INS or the Justice Department make great efforts to reach the relevant foreign communities. Information was first published on the INS Web site only 10 days before the first deadline — and even this turned out to be unreliable. Until yesterday afternoon, the Arabic version contained mistaken information, which may lead thousands of people to think they needn't register at all. Maybe the agency will do better today. If another fiasco ensues, it might be time to consider whether this registration procedure should be carried out at all, and, if so, whether the INS should be in charge of it.