New York--Early in 2002, I would often walk down Broadway in New York City, late on warm nights, when I began noticing a strange sight in front of the Federal Building in Lower Manhattan. Lines of people lined up down the block at 4 a.m. Thousands of immigrants from every corner of the world stood in silence with worried looks on their faces. This public shaming was repeated around the country for months as the fear of the “other” consumed the Bush administration after 9/11.

President Bush and Congress would force all non-citizens—mostly immigrants from Islamic countries--to reregister their legal status with the government or face deportation. I would later hear tales of persons who went to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to go through this process of registration and never be heard of again. Lost in the American prison system, many stripped of their rights guaranteed by numerous international treaties, some never came out alive.

Last week, the New York Times featured a shocking story unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union that forced Homeland Security officials to admit to the deaths of some 90 illegal immigrants in their custody. Most of these deaths were not reported and some even were completely hidden by Immigration and Customs officials from the families of these unfortunate souls.

Even President Obama’s aunt cannot escape the long arm of the INS./Homeland Security as she faces possible deportation back to Kenya. Certainly she won’t become one of the thousands of anonymous disappeared, who languish for years in jails around America while their status for deportation is decided.

Among the many foreign nationals trapped in the American legal debacle related to detention centers like Guantanamo Bay, are 17 Chinese Uighur men—who have been exonerated but have no home. They were sold to Americans for interrogation by Pakistan bounty hunters after the U.S. bombed their refuges in Afghanistan when they tried to escape oppression in Communist China.

A Writ of Certiori has been filed on their behalf with the Supreme Court by the ACLU, which could decide their fate. No country will take these men who hail from an oppressed ethnic Chinese minority, except Albania which took a couple. After all of this, after having been proven innocent and wrongfully imprisoned for the last seven years at Gitmo, I believe these guys should at least get dual citizenship and be allowed to settle here in the land of the free.

President Obama has promised to close down Gitmo giving legal resolution to some 244 prisoners still be held in Cuba, but cannot until he finds places around the world that will accept them. I say we welcome them here in the U.S. as restitution. I suggest we ship them to Wyoming to live on Dick Cheney’s ranch. He’s probably got a big spread with plenty of room and fresh air for them to rebuild their lives after being subjected to waterboarding, extraordinary rendition and interrogation through sexual humiliation.

In similar news, a U.S. District Court ruled that three detainees in U.S. custody at the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan are entitled to the same legal protections as Gitmo prisoners, meaning they have a right to an attorney, to challenge their detention in Federal Court and to file a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Strangely, the ruling will have no bearing on the fate of 600 persons being detained at the Iraqi airbase, who were captured in that theater of war.

Two weeks ago, a Spanish judge surprised the world when he announced the beginning of a criminal investigation into the actions of six Bush administration lawyers accused of willful manipulation of the legal definition of torture to find justification for illegal interrogation techniques used by Department of Defense officials at detention facilities around the world.

Mentioned as targets of the investigation by Judge Garzon, who prosecuted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinoche, were Douglas J. Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy; John C. Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer; Alberto R. Gonzales, former U.S. Attorney General; William J. Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay S. Bybee, Mr. Yoo’s former boss at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and David S. Addington, who was the chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Not mentioned, but also seemingly obvious targets for investigation, would be former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice-President Dick Cheney, who stand accused by several documentaries and books to having pressured for legal opinions to circumvent the Geneva Convention and the 1984 Torture Convention.

This is happening in Spain because five Spanish citizens—who were held in detention for years at Gitmo, only to be exonerated in Spanish courts, are now seeking justice for being subjected to interrogation techniques specifically prohibited by international treaties signed onto by the U.S.

Gonzalo Boye, the Madrid lawyer who filed the complaint, was quoted in published reports are saying, “This is a case from lawyers against lawyers. Our profession does not allow us to misuse our legal knowledge to create a pseudo-legal frame to justify, stimulate and cover up torture.”

Continued pressure from the Center for Constitutional Rights to find a European court that would hold someone in the United States accountable, led the way in the Spanish investigation. Criminal indictments might confine the accused to the borders of the U.S. for the illegal kidnapping, detention and torture of hundreds of foreign nationals in the War on Terror.