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On September 11, 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), then part of the Department of Justice, began implementing a broad program of for certain non-immigrant aliens resident the United States to facilitate the monitoring of people so registered in the interest of national security. The body of rules governing special registration is now referred to as the National Security Entry and Exit Registry System (NSEERS). Registration is mandatory. Non-compliance and lack of truthful disclosure upon registration are grounds for deportation, and Attorney General John Ashcroft declared that those failing to register upon exiting the US can be barred from subsequent re-entry. Ashcroft and the INS have repeatedly assured audiences that changes immigration procedures subsequent to the September 11 attacks are not based on racial or religious profiling. But practice, special registration has been nothing short of a massive roundup of out-of-status and visiting Arabs and Asians from predominantly Muslim countries. While special registration is much larger scope than the infamous INS workplace raids of late 2001, it has evoked far less public and institutional protest than those actions. Of the estimated 3.2 to 3.6 million persons the US who are out of status, and the 8 million undocumented, Arabs and Muslims constitute a very small proportion, yet they are the target of this initiative. The number of persons who will be from the US as a result of this program is unknown, but Ashcroft has already removed more Arabs and Muslims (who were neither terrorists nor criminals) from the US the past year than the total number of foreign nationals deported the infamous Palmer raids of 1919.
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