INS TALKS TOUGH. In defending their detention of Pakistani journalist and Brookings Scholar Ejaz Haider on Tuesday, the INS has used some pretty ominous words. Here's a quote from the end of the Washington Post article today:

Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez challenged Haider's account and said the journalist was aware of the program's requirements because he had written articles critical of it.

Martinez said Haider spent three hours at an INS detention center in Alexandria while national security and background checks were done. He was released and told to register the next day, which he did. "You can see the discretion INS officers showed by permitting him to register without suffering any penalties," Martinez said. [Emphasis added]

First of all, as Politics in the Zeros notes, this quote from Martinez seems to indicate that there was at least some payback going on here. I couldn't find any of the articles that Martinez refers to above; what I did find was a sarcastic article in the Friday Times (need reg.), for which Haider is a news editor, lampooning U.S. views of the outside world in general. The article is linked as "10 Things Not to Tell the INS when You go To Register," (but the title on the page reads, "Top Ten Ways to Tell Your Country Needs Sensitivity Lessons" -- not so subtle humor at work, obviously) and it contains such gems as:

7. Your President refers to the leader of Korea as a “weird little dude”

6. Bomb civilians and say you are “smoking ‘em out of their holes”

5. Say you are on a Crusade before attacking another country

I won't give away the whole list, but you get the idea already. This is hardly an article critical of the INS registration policy itself, however; and it's not written by Haider. I couldn't find any article critical of the INS "special registration" policy written by Haider, even searching the Daily Times website where Haider is also an editor and contributor.

So, there are two major things wrong with this situation already: (1) Jorge Martinez and the INS are seeking to cast doubt on Haider's credibility by focusing on articles that he supposedly wrote but that are pretty hard to find. Where are these articles? I'd like to see them. And (2) the INS has been paying attention to what Haider said about the INS special registration program, and then mentioning their knowledge of his writings in the context of a justification for his detention. Talk about the appearance of impropriety!

Not that the INS shouldn't be a little upset by Haider's portrayal of the events. Read the Daily Times article on his detention here. Haider apparently had problems with an INS official at the airport, upon arrival, and sees his Tuesday detention as related to that earlier incident. Perhaps it's not surprising that the INS is reading stories that are critical of their policies -- in fact, I hope they are reading the stories, for they are legion. But to single out people who are under your surveillance as being critical of the detentions program is inexcusable.

To these problems, add a third: Martinez intimates that INS agents actually did Haider a favor on Tuesday by exercising their "discretion" and not meting out further "penalties." What does Martinez mean? That Haider could have been deported on the spot? Jailed while his case was pending further review? These are scary words from Martinez. They seem to mean: "we didn't have to be nice to him, after all." Put those words together with the fact that Martinez knew what Haider was writing about the INS, and you've got a pretty frightening situation.

UPDATE: a Lexis-Nexis search turned up no critical articles by Haider, but it did turn up a UPI wire report from today with accusations from INS officials that Haider deliberately refused to register in order to protest the policy. The wire report quotes Martinez as saying that Haider himself told an INS official at Dulles, on Oct. 22, that he was a vocal and published critic of the registration program.

Parts of the wire report are confusing. Haider claims that he checked with the INS to see if he needed to return for an interview and was told that citizens from Pakistan didn't need to do so. Further, according to the article, Pakistan wasn't put on the list of countries whose nationals needed to register until December 18, two months after he first arrived. The article seems to indicate that Haider was detained for not following a policy that wasn't in place when he arrived at Dulles. But Martinez is quoted as saying that Haider still should have registered and should have known about it.

The wire report also answers my earlier question about what "penalties" the INS could have meted out to him: deportation proceedings.

The idea that Haider would not register out of protest seems forced to me. It certainly would be nice to know more about the details of this case.