A secretive government program dubbed "Operation Front Line," ostensibly designed to prevent "terrorist" activity around the 2004 Presidential election, instead primarily targeted men from Muslim-majority countries without links to any national security-related activity, according to newly-released information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The program ran from October 2004 through the Presidential Inauguration in January 2005. The New York Times reports:
The documents show that more than 2,500 foreigners in the United States were sought as "priority leads" in the fall of 2004 because of suspicions that they could present threats to national security in the months before the presidential election and the inauguration. Some of those foreigners were detained and ultimately deported because they had overstayed their visas, but many were in this country legally, and the vast majority were not charged... A sampling of 300 cases turned over by federal officials showed that none of those interrogated were charged with national security offenses. Fewer than one in five were charged, most of them with immigration violations.
"For more than four years, and through two lawsuits, ICE has resisted public scrutiny of Operation Front Line. Now, the public will be able to draw its own conclusions about the nature and purpose of an operation that appears to have led to no national security charges, and instead broadly targeted immigrants from Muslim-majority countries," said Sameer Ahmed, one of the Yale Law School students handling the lawsuit that led to the release of records.
Key findings released today from a court-ordered random sample of 300 files of the more than 2000 investigations include:
• 79% of the foreign nationals targeted by Operation Front Line were from Muslim-majority countries.
• Deportable foreign nationals from Muslim-majority countries were 1,280 times more likely to be targeted by Operation Front Line than were similar individuals from other countries.
• Operation Front Line investigations included in the sample led to no charges (and no convictions) for national-security related crimes.
• Only 18% of Operation Front Line targets were charged with any immigration violation, the most common being overstaying a visa (36% of all charges filed).
According to the Times article:
"This was profiling," said Michael Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School who helped lead the research effort. He added that the findings raised questions about both the effectiveness and the propriety of the program.
"The resources devoted to this were enormous," he said, "but the results clearly were not."