E-Mail This Article to a Friend The patriot ax, continued
	Related Links US Department of Homeland Security A portal to all things national security, with information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition MIRA lobbies for immigration-policy reform on Beacon Hill, working to increase immigrants’ access to health care, education, and jobs. National Immigration Project This Boston-based organization offers legal support for noncitizens.

NOT JUST TERRORISM

It’s tempting to pin the current harsh immigration climate on a post-9/11 mentality. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, Congress formed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and has since funneled billions of dollars toward immigration enforcement as one way to root out potentially dangerous aliens.

But immigration advocates say it all began back in the 1990s, with IRAIRA. Indeed, DHS statistics show a leap of nearly 125 percent in formal immigrant removals between 1995 and 1997, from 50,924 to 114,432. The difference is that now, enforcers are under more pressure, publicly and financially, to detain and deport. By 2003, deportations and removals reached 186,151. DHS highlights the increase in criminal cases (like Young’s), "including those pertaining to narcotics and terrorism." Those numbers jumped 116 percent between 1994 and 1999, and another four percent between 2002 and 2003.

"What September 11 has done is give this national-security veneer," says Washington, DC–based immigration lawyer Joan Friedland, of the National Immigration Law Center. "So then you argue, ‘Look, this doesn’t have anything to do with national security.’ But people are frightened and they’ll accept anything that ... makes people feel better."

"Everybody — our side too — cares about national security," she adds, pre-emptively addressing a soft-on-terror accusation. "But wouldn’t you prefer measures that actually mean something?"

Instead, we get smoke and mirrors, Shah says. "ICE flags certain dangerous individuals, and puts them on their Web site as people who are dangerous to society and dangerous to our communities. They certainly don’t put up, or we don’t hear about, the thousands of people who have served a sentence [and] who now have an aggravated felony.

"And those people are connected to their families, have jobs, pay their taxes, are members of society for all intents and purposes," she continues. "I think what ICE has done is capitalize on that system ... to bring them in and then say, ‘Oh, look at all these dangerous criminal aliens we’re deporting.’"

As a result, legal residents who have already served time for their offenses are detained indefinitely, in most cases without bail, and in many cases without a lawyer. (In immigration court, unlike in the criminal system, lawyers are not guaranteed.)

"In the ICE world, you’re guilty until proven innocent," Young says. And "it’s taken its toll." One of the worst effects? Since he’s been in jail, Young’s girlfriend of seven years has left him. "That was [a] killer," he says.

But even immigrant advocates place more blame on the policy than on those who enforce it. "ICE is really in a pickle of enforcing a broken law," says Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

Relief could come in the form of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005, introduced this May by Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). Known by immigration reformers as the McCain-Kennedy Act, it would bolster enforcement while making it easier for immigrants to navigate the system, become citizens, and understand both their rights and responsibilities, proponents say.

"The challenge right now is that things moving against the immigrant community are moving much more quickly and much more loudly," Noorani says. "The emphasis is on enforcement. Congress would much rather spend money on detaining, deporting, and keeping people from actually entering the country" than on helping immigrants.

SHRED OF HOPE

The Youngs, whose already-cluttered apartment now overflows with legal papers and manila file folders, have spent upwards of $5000 on legal fees, plus several thousand more on research and phone bills. In late September, Young’s lawyers will try to prove their client’s derivative citizenship.

And they may just have a case. Over the past year, armed with only the name of Young’s biological father (which the Phoenix agreed to keep confidential), the Youngs followed a paper trail of personnel and motor-vehicle records to the man’s last-known address in South Carolina. At the end of June, Rod Young, along with Markus’s half-brother and brother-in-law, drove straight through the night to procure a paternity test from the surprised and skittish man. The saliva-test results (99.9994 percent accurate) prove Markus Young’s American ancestry. Now, his lawyers are weaving together state laws with immigration regulations, building a strong case for his citizenship.

If these efforts don’t work, Young will be shipped to Germany, a country where he doesn’t know the people, the language, or the customs. He will be unable to seek readmission to the United States for 10 years.

Rod Young wonders how his son’s pot smoking threatens national security. "How are you guys protecting us from terrorism?" he asks into a void. "I’ve never seen a greater boondoggle bureaucracy."

Certainly, nothing prepared Young and his parents for the past year’s ordeal, nor can anything ready them for the very real possibility that he will be deported. His mother, who now sees her son only in handcuffs and shackles, seems still to be in shock. "He has no knowledge of Germany," she says with a lingering accent when asked to envision the worst-case scenario. "He grew up here."

Deirdre Fulton can be reached at dfulton[a]phx.com.