''Samir Khalaf was one of those 1,100. A Palestinian who worked at a gas station in Greenwich, Conn., he had a bad heart and bad timing. He went to the hospital with chest pains on Sept. 12. People thought he was acting suspicious. They called the police, who called the FBI. After his emergency angioplasty, the feds took him -- against doctors' advice, his friends told the Hartford Courant -- to the Hartford lockup.

There he remained, charged with failure to get a work permit. He was in the country legally and was quickly cleared of terrorism suspicion, Khalaf's lawyer told the Courant. (The lawyer, Michael Moore of Springfield, Mass., didn't return phone calls.) An immigration judge ruled on Oct. 3 that he could go home to his family in Gaza. But the INS wouldn't let him go until November.

[....]

Agents arrested an Egyptian dentist in California on immigration charges. When friends came to post bond, they were told it had been rescinded. Officers held one of the friends for eight hours of questioning. About a week later, the FBI transferred the dentist to a Brooklyn jail. Neither his friends nor the Egyptian embassy could find out where he was. The friends hired a lawyer. It took a month before she could track down the missing dentist. He's still in custody, Boyle said last week.''

- New Haven Advocate