On April 17, 2003, attorney general John Ashcroft ruled that undocumented immigrants could be held indefinitely without bond in the interest of national security. This was in response to a case involving David Joseph, a Haitian asylum seeker who had arrived in Miami on a boat, along with 215 others, on October 29, 2002. Joseph was eighteen and had no ties to terrorism, but his release on bond, Ashcroft wrote, “would create a perception in Haiti of an easing in U.S. policy” that would lead to “future surges in illegal migration…diverting valuable Coast Guard and DOD resources from
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