Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Saturday

Interview With Ruth Wedgewood, Jean Abinader

Aired January 12, 2002 - 20:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: To help us sort out the issues of rights for immigrants and detainees caught up in the war on terrorism we've got international law professor Ruth Wedgewood, of the Council on Foreign Relations. She joins us from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. And Jean Abinader, managing director of the American Arab Institute. He joins us this evening from Washington.

Good evening both of you. It is the weekend, and a casual one at that. So I invite both of you to jump in on the conversation. But, Ruth, let me begin with you first. Is what the Justice Department and John Ashcroft doing right now -- is it constitutional?

RUTH WEDGEWOOD, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, under the constitution you can never use race as a criterion, unless you meet suspect highly, highly rigorous requirements of showing that there's no alternative to do so. I think here that Attorney General Ashcroft would deny that it's race as such; it's nationality. It's the countries from which al Qaeda has recruited individuals to be part of their terror network.

So it's not race, it's national origin. And not even second generation, first generation; it's aliens who are currently citizens of foreign countries. And where al Qaeda itself in its own recruiting handbook says that only people of Muslim faith and Arab origin are eligible to be members of al Qaeda, there's really no alternative to doing that.

LIN: So, Jean, what has been the fallout? What have you seen grassroots, on the streets, stories being told, people you know?

JEAN ABINADER, AMERICAN ARAB INSTITUTE: There's a real sense of fear and intimidation in the community. I don't think anyone in the Arab or Muslim communities in the United States want to see terrorism. And they certainly have an enormous amount of grief as to what happened on September 11th, considering that a number of Muslims and Arab-Americans died in those incidents.

But what we're really concerned about is the way the Justice Department and the federal government is presenting these programs. First, they have 1,000 -- over 1,000 detainees right after September 11th; no information given out on them. Then they do the voluntary interviews with 5,000.

Now the -- entering into the computer the 6,000. What they're doing is saying to the American public, "Yes, don't discriminate against Arabs and Muslims, but we'll do it for you." And I don't think that's what they really mean. I agree with some of the people in Susan's report that there's a much more sophisticated effort going on here, but that's not the story that's coming out of Washington and it needs to be told a lot better.

LIN: But, Jean, the -- the environment has changed so radically in terms of everyone's perception of what is safe, what is secure, what is that we know even about our next door neighbor? Isn't this really just good law enforcement?

ABINADER: It's not good law enforcement, that's the problem. As they said on the tape -- and I think as the professor just mentioned -- you've got to use something that's more than just ethnic based or race based or nationality based. You've got other criteria. I mean, 6,000 is an unmanageable number for our law enforcement officials.

We've got to look at do they have criminal backgrounds? Who do they associate with? What are the financial transactions they're involved with? I mean, we know how the people who were here got to do what they did. We now have that pretty well understood. So I think we could come up with a much more sophisticated profile that doesn't rely on race or nationality as the only criteria.

LIN: Ruth, what are the road rules of profiling, typically?

WEDGEWOOD: Can you say that again, I'm sorry.

LIN: What are the rules of profiling? You know, when a law enforcement agency is asked to take a look, take special attention to people of a certain profile, what are the parameters in that?

WEDGEWOOD: Well the thought is to be able to prioritize your order of doing things to deal with the most likely source of threat first. And you base that on ground level experience in ordinary law enforcement, what the characteristics of a person involved in a criminal gang are likely to be.

LIN: So if al Qaeda -- let me just take the example of al Qaeda, then.

WEDGEWOOD: Sure.

LIN: If al Qaeda is, in fact, rooted in Central Asia and the Middle East, isn't it logical then that the people most likely to be profiled at this point are people from the Middle East?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, certainly, if you were thinking of how to allocate your -- your resources in deporting people who have overstayed their visas -- because there's no right to stay if you have overstayed your visa. You're supposed to leave the country. But if you're allocating your resources, it makes sense to start with the most problematic cases. And here, my guess is that the Justice Department won't simply look at the national citizenship of the overstayed alien, but as well, other conditions that might lead one to worry about their nature. How recently they came, whether they have visible long-term employment, other associations.

I think that my critical colleague is right, that one can do more discrimination than simply nationality. But if you're trying to decide whether to focus on people from India -- or, instead, from Saudi, Yemen and Egypt, it makes sense to start where al Qaeda recruits from.

LIN: I mean, what...

ABINADER: I think historically, though, I think -- if I could just...

LIN: Sure.

ABINADER: ... and I'm not being contrary; I'm trying to elucidate from a historical perspective. If we -- if we would follow some of the thinking that seems to be going on in the Justice Department, why weren't we rounding up Irish-Americans when there were problems with the Irish in Britain? Why weren't we rounding up people from Peru and Columbia and Jamaica when we were having problems with drug issues?

I think what we've got to do here is help our law enforcement officials by creating profiles and creating processes with these detainees and with the overstays that will allow us to do the job the best.

I agree with the doctor, we've got to understand where the priorities are. Who are the people most likely to be threats to society? Our experience is that most of these people who have overstayed their visa are people who are students who came out of school, couldn't pay their tuition or flunked out, and stayed here. Or they were visas -- people who came on tourist visas.

And so they're here now; they overstayed their tourist visa, or visiting family members, and they wanted to stay. We've got to have a better way to determine which people are threats to our society, and do it in such a way that allows our law enforcement people to be very effective.

WEDGEWOOD: But, Carol -- but, Carol...

LIN: Ruth, go ahead.

WEDGEWOOD: ... but there are ways to regularize your status even if you're picked up by the INS for having overstayed your visa. But I think the point is, first, to get a handle on who these 6,000 overstays are.

Because the problem with trying to anticipate al Qaeda's movements is our only real edge is to disrupt them, to anticipate them, to throw them off their game. We don't know who's involved; they do have cells. I think everybody acknowledges that there are underground cells. And we can't simply wait for the gun to be drawn and the plane to be... LIN: So you're dealing with proving a negative or searching for the unknown. Does this make an argument, then, for something like a national identity card?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, I think some people think that driver's licenses can serve much the same purpose. I recently got mugged and I had to get a new driver's license, and Connecticut was very strict. I had to go dig out my old New York City birth certificate to get a driver's license. So I think there are some surrogates that one can use. But, initially, I think there's a sense that American privacy has been misused. And al Qaeda was very skillful at exploiting the very liberties that we so highly regard and treasure.

LIN: Jean, what is the solution then? What do you think?

ABINADER: I don't think there's a single answer here. I think that what we've got to understand is what's the end game. The end game is to improve American security and to safeguard the rights of Americans and immigrants to this country. And so when we begin from that premise, then we should create a process that, number one, helps our law enforcement officials do the best job they can. Particularly by getting the political smoke out of the way; and a lot of this is political smoke.

Secondly, it gives the American public a greater sense of security that something tangible is being done, not just smoke signals being sent out. For example, we've been on a national alert that something's going to happen since November. This does not contribute to a climate of security, and it contributes to greater mistrust of people who have been in this country one or two generations or people who have immigrated here legally. So we've got to be very cautious about how we balance our need to develop better security procedures and respect for individual rights.

LIN: Are you working with the Justice Department or any federal officials on -- on that very kind of a plan?

ABINADER: Constantly. And that's why we get surprised when this -- these announcements come out like these 6,000 or the $5,000 -- I mean, the 5,000 interviews. We've met with the attorney general; we've met with the assistant (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for civil rights. We have ongoing programs with the community services Department of Justice. We meet with the FBI on a weekly basis and with INS.

LIN: Are they receptive?

ABINADER: They're very receptive, because we're the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) into the community. We're the people that can help them understand where their best opportunities are to gather intelligence. But by having these kinds of projects without even talking to the communities, I think, is a big mistake.

LIN: All right. At least that dialogue is going on. Thank you very much Jean Abinader, Ruth Wedgewood.

ABINADER: Thank you. WEDGEWOOD: Thank you.

LIN: Very informative tonight.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com