Another program initiated in 2002, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which had its origins in the 1996 AEDPA terrorism bill and was amended by the USA PATRIOT Act, required male immigrants sixteen and older from twenty-five countries to report to INS offices in order to be “fingerprinted, photographed, interviewed, and have their financial information copied, or to register when they enter the country, then re-register after thirty days,” as legal scholar Nancy Murray writes. (The countries were named this time, and included Muslimmajority and Middle Eastern countries as well as North Korea.) By fall 2003, more than eighty-three thousand immigrant residents had registered under the program. As their reward for coming forward, 13,799 found themselves facing deportation proceedings. As for whether “terrorists” were apprehended by this program, eleven people were found to have “links” to terrorism. The program yielded not a single terrorism conviction.

QUESTION: This remarkable inefficiency — 83,000 registrants, 13,799 deportation proceedings, one alleged conviction — warrants deeper investigation into the program's stated versus actual purpose.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 447