excerpt from the Report to the 9/11 Commission from the Special Registrants Action Network:

In the basement of Terminal 4 at John F. Kennedy Airport, down a vacant corridor, passed the lost luggage room, and beside a bin of defective go-carts, is a door labeled “storage”. And next to that door is another, with a cheaply laminated and factually incorrect sign that reads: “US Immigration and Naturalization Service. Pick up phone to call for registration.” This is where Harun Ur Rasheed completed his Special Registration requirement before departing to Bangladesh on October 28, 2003.

When the Bush Administration engineered the program in November 2002, they publicized it only on their immigration website and in the Federal Register - places obscure to even most Americans. Ethnic newspapers, community organizations and lawyers in the private sector scrambled to warn men and boys who had to register that the program existed. Rumors and fear spread like wild fire. Entire neighborhoods chose to leave the country, afraid of persecution at the hands of the Department of Justice (DOJ). For those who stayed it became a Catch 22: those who do register are subject top prosecution and deportation; those who do not face the same fate.

When Harun voluntarily went to Federal Plaza last February to give the government details about himself, he did not anticipate that this journey would lead to his expulsion from New York. He moved here from Bangladesh in 1997, seeking medical care for advanced glaucoma. After spending thousands on unsuccessful treatments, he decided to remain here. He got a job in construction and, like millions of immigrants, sent money to support his wife and child back home.

Harun thought that for his compliance with Special Registration, the federal government would provide him with a way to secure legal status. Instead he was handed a Notice to Appear for deportation proceedings. Though Harun had access to the best attorneys in town, he did not want to undergo a legal formality that would lead down an imminent path to deportation. So he opted to leave. But he would not leave quietly. Even humble Harun, an illegal Brooklynite from Bangladesh, a construction worker with advanced glaucoma is a human being with a human will. Special Registration provoked in him the righteous anger that any human feels when you know you are being punished unjustly. Behind every injustice is a community. Harun chose to speak out to his before leaving the U.S. We held a press conference beside Harun’s Brooklyn mosque, hours before his departure. Print and television media in New York covered the event, where Harun reprimanded the government: “I honored your law, Mr. Ashcroft, and you gave me deportation. You say this is a human rights country? You should have given me a way to fix my immigration status. I have no other option, but I will not leave quietly.”

Children just getting out of school formed a circle around him, in disbelief that this man is a target of the domestic War on Terror. After Harun prayed and broke his fast in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he led a somber procession to the airport.

That lonely basement corridor, just below a global transportation hub, is where “national security” was administered to Harun. He knocked on the misnomered door. No response, until some minutes later a DHS officer returned from his cigarette break. Harun verified his identity to the officer, got his passport stamped, and froze for a digital picture. He is now in Bangladesh, uprooted from his American community like thousands of others who complied with Special Registration.