In their book, "Less Safe, Less Free: Why American is loosing the War on Terror," Professors David Cole and Jules Lobel made a compelling case as to why preventive law enforcement has failed, and why "anticipatory coercion has nearly always proved to be a grave mistake, not only as a matter of principle but also as a matter of effective security."
Below is an excerpt from Part II of the book, "Less Safe"- chapter 4, "The Failure of Preventive Law Enforcement"- with the subsection entitled "Immigration Enforcement: 0 For 93,000"-page 107
“When Attorney General John Ashcroft first announced the ‘paradigm of prevention’ in a speech in October 2001 in New York City, he vowed that the administration would use all laws within its power to round up suspected terrorists and prevent them from inflicting further damage upon us. He explicitly singled out immigration law, warning terrorists that that if they ‘overstayed [their] visa by even one day,’ they would be locked up. The administration subsequently adopted a zero-tolerance immigration policy towards immigrants and visitors from Arab and Muslim countries, on the theory that it would thereby root out the terrorists. But the nation’s broadest campaign of ethnic profiling since World War II came up empty. The Special Registration program, which required 80,000 men from predominantly Arab and Muslim countries to register after September 11, resulted in not a single terrorist conviction. Of the 8,000 men of Arab and Muslim descent sought out for FBI interviews, and the more than 5,000 foreign nationals placed in preventive detention in the first two years after 9/11, virtually all Arabs and Muslims, not one stands convicted of a terrorist crime today. In these initiatives, the government’s record is 0 for 93,000.”
