We Are All New Yorkers

Pick a street, any street, in any immigrant neighborhood in New York, and ask residents how they've been faring over the last couple of years under George W. Bush. You'll discover—as the grassroots group Families for Freedom has been finding in its corner-by-corner surveys—that the city's population inhabits two parallel universes: one for citizens, one for everybody else. Certainly low-wage immigrant workers stand on the far bank of the ever expanding income gap. But as keenly as those who deliver the city's pizzas, immigrants who deliver its babies are feeling the squeeze of the Bush administration's draconian policies and aggressive enforcement.

photo: Jake Price/Sipa Press

August 21: Immigrants' rights rally in Queens

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More About

• George W. Bush
• Donald Anthonyson
• Ansar Mahmood
• Immigration
• Citizenship and Naturalization

"Whenever the terror warnings come out, our community gets just as scared of what the American government will do to us," says Jagajit Singh, director of programs at the Council of Pakistani Organizations in Midwood, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that has seen thousands of its men harassed, detained, or deported—first through post-9-11 roundups and then through the "special registration" program that required men from 25 predominantly Muslim countries to appear in immigration offices for interviews and fingerprinting. "People believe that the administration hates us and wants us out," Singh adds.

But it's not just in Muslim enclaves like Midwood where this sentiment hangs in the air like an enervating humidity. Immigrants from all over the world, especially from Latin America and the Caribbean, are finding their communities just as devastated by detentions and deportations and a general sense that they are no longer welcome. In diverse neighborhoods around New York, Families for Freedom found that more than half of the noncitizens surveyed—a majority of them green-card holders—said they were afraid to seek help from government agencies. A stunning 60 percent said they believe the government is making New York City unsafe for immigrants. About as many said they knew someone who had been deported—and in Flatbush, that number hit 80 percent. From Jackson Heights to Washington Heights, the "war on terror" is being experienced as a war on immigrants.

Ask Donald Anthonyson, who found himself plucked from the security-check line at the Puerto Rico airport in May on his way back to New York from a routine business trip to his native Antigua. As a dreads-wearing Rastafarian, "I'm used to the extra searches," he says wryly. But he still hasn't gotten over the shock of being handcuffed, sent to a waiting room for a couple of hours, and then tossed into detention and deportation proceedings as a "criminal alien" because the airport computer showed he had a 1986 conviction. It was a misdemeanor (an inoperable but unregistered gun was found in his house: illegal possession of a weapon) and the penalty was a $200 fine, which he paid right away. He's had no problems with the law ever since.

On the contrary. Later in 1986 Anthonyson was granted permanent residency in the U.S., and since then he twice applied for and got permission to extend the period of time a green-card holder can stay out of the country. Over the last 17 years he crossed the American border dozens of times without any trouble. Now, though his U.S.-citizen mother, siblings, and children live here, Anthonyson is slated to go before an immigration judge in early September and defend himself against Uncle Sam's swift boot.

Citing the case of Ansar Mahmood, a young Pakistani who was deported on August 12 for the felony of "harboring illegal aliens"—he helped a Pakistani couple find an apartment—Anthonyson says he's not optimistic. Mahmood had the support of community citizens who had organized on his behalf, and even of Senator Chuck Schumer; Anthonyson can't afford a lawyer.

The legal infrastructure supporting the deportation charges against Anthonyson, Mahmood, and hundreds of thousands of others was established with restrictive laws pushed through by the Newt Gingrich Congress (and signed by Bill Clinton) in 1996. But the Bush administration has built elaborately upon it. Worse—as in other policy realms—it has bypassed Congress and used various executive orders and backdoor means to press its extreme agenda.

In countless ways administration policies have decimated neighborhoods, torn families apart, cavalierly returned asylum-seekers and torture survivors to the places they fled, and eroded due process for noncitizens. Among the means, shortly after 9-11—along with extending the period of time a person could be detained without charges and chipping away at judges' discretion to set bond or release detainees—Attorney General John Ashcroft gutted the Board of Immigration Appeals (where those facing deportation could bring a reasonable challenge to the order) and purged it of liberal judges.

The climate worsened after the long-beleaguered Immigration and Naturalization Service was dissolved in 2003 and its functions divided between a bureau dealing with such matters as visa renewals and naturalization (U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, or USCIS), and another, residing in the Department of Homeland Security, whose job it is to crack down (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE). As advocates predicted, USCIS has been starved for funds, and routine applications—as in INS days—can take months, even years. Scores of men who showed up for "special registration" were put into deportation proceedings only because applications for, say, status through a family sponsor had been stuck in the backlog. What's more, immigrants with pending applications who show up for USCIS appointments, but are found to have some lingering violation, are handed over by the service division to the cold claws of ICE.