• Country-Specific Actions: Various post-9/11 immigration programs explicitly targeted country -specific groups. Under the voluntary interview program, FBI interviewed more than 8,000 nonimmigrants from specified countries with a suspected al Qaeda presence. Those interviews were extended to over 10,000 Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans. Under NSEERS (or the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System special registration program), adult males from 25 predominately Muslim countries were required to register and be fingerprinted and photographed at ports of entry or present themselves at immigration offices inside the country for fingerprints and photographs. More than 80,000 individuals were interviewed under the program, and over 13,000 were placed in removal proceedings. Similarly, the government designated as "priority absconders" thousands of men from countries with a known al Qaeda presence who had violated their final orders of removal, and placed their names in an FBI database used by local and state law enforcement officials. Almost all those affected by these country-specific programs were nationals of Muslim-majority countries.
Most of These Policies Have Been Discontinued But Legal Challenges Survive
Most of the immigration actions specifically directed at Muslim immigrants have been discontinued. The voluntary interview program ended in December 2002. The "absconder initiative" now exists as part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Fugitive Operations Program, which is not nationality-specific. The portion of NSEERS that required those inside the country to register was ended in December 2003, and the program itself abolished in April 2011.