The next stage of round-ups have started, provoking street protests in L.A., which has seen a reported 500-700 detentions, including one of a 16 year-old who was in the country legally. The detainees are being picked up after they comply with an INS order that men from 17 mostly Muslim countries come in to be registered, with the intention of catching and tracking potential terrorists residing in the United States.
Most of those detained seem to be those whose visas have expired, but are awaiting for approval of their green cards, so the effect is that normally hard-working, law-abiding resident aliens are being scooped up under the flimsiest of excuses simply based on their nation of origin and their suspected religious affiliation.
Rather than achieve the stated goal of fighting terrorism, this new policy is likely to engender more anger at the United States from those parts of the world most likely to produce potential terrorists, because this policy represents the exact attitude toward them that is causing much of the anti-American sentiment abroad. It is a racist, bigoted policy masked in the aura of "security".
Not that the INS has not taken action against other groups of illegal immigrants in the United States, particularly those who make no pretense of being here legally: when illegal immigrants fom Mexico tried to convice the state of Colorado to extend driving privileges to them the INS didn't scoop them up and deport them. Likewise, when hundreds of illegal immigrants lined up at the Mexican embassy to get identification cards to make dealing with U.S. law enforcment easier, no INS vans or buses arrived to deport those who flouted our immigration laws. The reason? The INS claimed that they were not interested in, nor had the resources for, these types of round-ups.
The obvious answer is that the United States is not threatened by Mexican terrorists, at home, or abroad, which ultimately misses the point. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that all people withint the borders of the United States and its territories is granted equal protection under the law., whether they are citizens, non-citizens, are legal residents, or not, singling out men from one group of countries specifically goes against that. Note that this is not a restriction on immigration from these countries, it is a restriction on those who have arrived in the country legally, and are being singled out due to their origin, and based on no other criteria (other than gender -- another potential problem).
The next step for the Bush Administration is obvious - internment camps.