ICE proposes "special interest" list; critics charge profiling

"In the six and a half years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal law- enforcement agencies have secretly established profiling techniques to screen immigrants based on their nationalities, protocols that critics charge encourage the unjustified targeting of Muslims. The profiling, described in a February 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo that McClatchy obtained, shows that the government has relied more heavily on nationality as an indicator of security risks than was previously known. Federal agencies have created internal lists of countries that are of "special interest" for national security reasons, wrote the memo's author, Ted Stark, supervisory special agent with the Office of Intelligence at ICE." Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Washington Bureau, Mar. 4, 2008.