In January and February of this year, the Justice Department filed charges against 56 people in what it called "terrorism" cases. According to an investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer, at least 41 of the 56 cases had nothing to do with terrorism. The cases include those of 28 Latin American immigrants charged with working illegally at the airport in Austin, Texas; most of them were using fake Social Security numbers. Twenty of the 28 have pleaded guilty. Daryl Fields, spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, said there was no evidence any were linked to terrorism.

In January, the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the US Congress reported that about 75% of all "international terrorism" convictions were wrong in fiscal 2002. The GAO audit said the error prevented Congress and the public from understanding how much taxpayer money was being spent to prosecute terrorism. The audit did not take into account another batch of "terrorism" cases filed last fall in New Jersey against 60 Middle Eastern men. The Inquirer, aided by Syracuse University's nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, found they were students charged with cheating on the English test for admission to a US university. The Justice Department says some prosecutors may have misclassified cases, and has promised to fix the problem.

[Philadelphia Inquirer 5/15/03]
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