Illustration by Cody Angell

Eager to do something. Anything. That was the state of the nation in the months following the 9/11 attacks. Everyone felt frustration and a sense of hopelessness. It seemed fitting that our law enforcement should do anything to make the nation safe again.

Just about anything was exactly what they did. We learned over spring break that the Immigration and Naturalization Service can be disorganized and careless when they approved visas to known terrorists. What few of us know is that this same INS is not only demonstrating incompetence, but also overextending its powers, often impinging on individuals' personal freedom.

Eleven hundred Middle Eastern men were arrested at the peak of what could be called a dragnet - a massive, sweeping incarceration of Arabs and Arab-Americans. Some were brought in for very serious crimes, some for a violation as minor as being two days over the limit of a work visa. However, most were caught in a wave of detentions and then never linked to anything that had to do with the attacks on Sept. 11.

The catch? They were all brought in on immigration charges, not criminal charges. This important distinction has been a nightmare for the individuals and their families because the difference between immigration and criminal charges is vast. Today, 326 remain sitting in jails, mostly in New Jersey.

What has life been like? Devoid of the usual rights we have given the most treacherous of murderers and rapists, there has been no promise of due process - which includes the right to a speedy trial. It has been almost half a year since their incarceration. The government is not required to release their names, their country of origin, or the supposed crime they may have been charged with. For months, there was not even a release of the total number of men that are being held.

The Associated Press reported that Khalid Musa, a 23-year-old Saudi native whose only transgression was overstaying a 90-day program that waives his need for a visa. He was arrested on Oct. 4, and his family, who lives in New York, has been working with officials ever since. Within just three weeks, he was officially cleared by the FBI as having nothing to do with the attacks, but continued to sit in jail on his minor immigration infraction. In February, a lawyer sued the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on his behalf simply to get him deported back home to Saudi Arabia and won. The family was told to be patient, that travel arrangements were being made for Musa and that he would soon be released.

Khalid Musa is still sitting in jail. Says Musa's brother-in-law, "He said he's afraid he's going to spend the rest of his life there." In a "60 Minutes" interview in the fall, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta promised the nation that this was the exact type of inappropriate government- sponsored incarceration that would not be tolerated. In a twist of fate, when Mineta was a young boy in a Cub Scout uniform at a little league game, he was forced onto a train to California where he spent time in the Japanese internment camps.

In the days following 9/11, Secretary Mineta, a Bush appointee, was splashed all over the news as one of the leading experts who would be helping to solve our crisis. A month later, he gave an interview where he forcefully denounced the new trend of anti-Arab- American behavior and pleaded with the nation not to repeat our mistakes of the past. We never heard from him again.

The White House has pulled another Cheney disappearing act, and the Secretary of Transportation has been lost in oblivion.

Three hundred and twenty-six men sit in jail. Their names, with the exception of Khalid Musa, whose family witnessed the arrest, have not been released. Their families wonder where the men are, if perhaps they have died. No word gets back home to the Middle East.

So much grief this nation suffered during and after 9/11. Why must we continue the misery by making the same mistakes we have made in the past? There are internment camps in New Jersey.

Someone wake Chief Justice Warren from his grave and tell him his work is not done. His court closed the California camps and perhaps he could advise us to close the camps of 2002.