…to live in the Fourth Reich? I hope you’re proud. Now let’s see that Sig Heil! It’s not the Jews now. It’s the Muslims. Will we have the equivalent Yellow Crescent patches that Muslims will be required to wear or carry on their person?
Civil-rights groups and immigration advocacy organizations are protesting one element in the government’s security procedures announced yesterday in anticipation of war in Iraq–a decision to jail asylum seekers from dozens of mostly Muslim nations while officials check out their claims of persecution in their home countries.
The complaints rose as security was stepped up across the country today, with more federal agents assigned to U.S. borders, increased deployment of Coast Guard ships and aircraft at seaports, and health officials placed on special alert to watch for possible chemical or biological attack. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also asked many of the nation’s 50 governors to deploy the National Guard or state police at sensitive sites such as chemical plants and railroad bridges.
In addition, on Monday evening at the same time as President Bush’s speech on war in Iraq, Ridge announced he was raising the nation’s threat alert level to orange or “high risk” because of the danger terrorists would retaliate for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
“It’s a shocking development,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil-rights group, said of the asylum policy. “Many asylum applications can take years. It seems unfair to put people in jail who are escaping persecution and who have done nothing wrong just because they are from certain countries.”
