Asim Salam wanted to go downtown by himself on February 6, but his father-in-law insisted on coming along. “You are new in the midwest,” Shahid Sheikh told him. “You don’t know it very well.” Salam was complying with the Department of Justice’s Special Registration program, which requires males over 16 visiting from designated countries–most of them, like Salam’s native Pakistan, predominantly Muslim–to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and account for their presence in the United States. Salam had heard of the arrests of hundreds of nonimmigrants who registered in Los Angeles in December. But he thought he had nothing to worry about.
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At around 9:30 AM Salam and Sheikh arrived at the INS offices on the second floor of the Kluczynski Federal Building with a copy of Salam’s green card application, his passport, his employment authorization card, and letters from USC verifying his status as a foreign student. When Salam’s turn came, a woman took him into an office and began questioning him. What was his wife’s name? Was he employed? Where did he go to school? After about half an hour she told him he’d have to accompany her to the 23rd floor to complete the interview. In the elevator she explained the standard follow-up procedures of Special Registration–Salam would have to report every year for interviews as long as he remained a nonimmigrant. Upstairs she led him into an office and then left, telling him she’d be back in a few minutes. She never returned.
Instead, Salam says, an immigration officer wearing a badge appeared and escorted him into another room, then sat wordlessly at a desk. Salam asked him what was going on. “Oh, you’re under arrest,” the man replied.
Salam was taken to another room, where he was handcuffed to a Syrian doctor. With a dozen other detainees of various nationalities, he and the doctor were transported by van to the Chicago District Office of the INS at 10 W. Jackson. There, says Salam, they were subjected to another long round of interviews. After that the men were photographed, fingerprinted, and issued bail bonds. Salam says most of the men received $5,000 bonds, although one who admitted to having a criminal record was given a $25,000 bond. Although Salam has no criminal record, he received a $7,500 bond; he doesn’t know why his was higher. According to Salam, most of the men knew they were violating immigration law and were expecting to be arrested, but three or four others like him were completely surprised.
Sheikh paid the bond and drove to Broadview, arriving at around one o’clock. Communication with the staff at Broadview was conducted via an intercom by the door. Sheikh asked about Salam. The voice that answered denied knowing whether Salam was there, and told Sheikh to wait. Sheikh joined a group of people waiting in the parking lot for family members to be released. While he was there, his wife called him on his cell phone to tell him that Salam had called from inside Broadview.
Harvey Stein, associate director of the Office of International Affairs at the University of Chicago, has qualified feelings of sympathy for the post-September 11 INS. “I think there’s been an awful lot of unfair flak that they’ve had to take in the press,” he says, before adding, “I must say in a sense they deserve it because they’ve been ruining people’s lives for decades now.” In a case like Salam’s, Stein sees a gray area in the law. “A lot of people misuse that work permission,” he says. “That is, they apply for practical training permission mainly because they just want to stay in the United States, not because they actually want to work or need to work in their field. But that’s a judgment that is rarely made. It could be an excuse to apply a really harsh standard. But it could also be entirely appropriate. There’s a lot of leeway there.”
