WASHINGTON, 21 June — A Congressional subcommittee held a hearing yesterday to examine what the Immigration and Naturalization Service has done, and is doing, abut the 314,000 people it estimates remain illegally in the country, despite orders that they be deported, and about the millions of other illegal aliens who reside in the United States.

Last December, the INS announced a plan to transfer the names of 314,000 people ignoring their deportation orders to the FBI’s database at the National Crime Information Center. The logic behind this action being that if the FBI or the state and local police locate someone listed on this database, they can then report that person to the INS.

Rep. George Gekas, R-Pennsylvania, and chairman of the Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, said reports were “troublesome” that the INS might have to ignore the boarder issue of illegal immigration to focus on potential threats regarding domestic security.

“I cannot subscribe to such a policy, or such an idea, and I believe that we are committed look in to the implications of that kind of broad policy statement,” Rep. Gekas said at an oversight hearing.

The INS has been extensively criticized for its apparent inability to stop illegal entries and track visitors in the country. And its role in deporting those who have overstayed their visa, entered the country illegally, or are under deportation orders, has come under increased scrutiny since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Joseph Greene, the INS assistant commissioner for investigation, told the subcommittee that since the 9/11 attacks, his 2,000 INS investigators have been pulled in many different directions, including helping other law enforcement agencies in tracking down terrorists.

“If you look around our field offices, you will find agents who are using every law and every authority at their disposal to accomplish certain ends,” Greene told the panel. “But those ends are limited to those which we interpret pose the greatest harm to our people.”

Rep. Zoë Lofgren, D-California, agreed, saying the INS has limited funds and the post-Sept. 11 crackdown should not be aimed at all illegal immigrants.

“If we turn this into an effort to evict the farm workers instead of finding the terrorists, we will be putting America at risk,” she said. “To turn this need to go after terrorists into a need to oust those who pick our vegetables, I think, would be a real disservice.”

Many legal observers are also voicing concern: “I think that the US government is running the risk of treating hundreds of thousands of people as potential terrorists, when the vast majority of those who are here illegally are here out of painful economic necessity,” Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, which publishes a regular feature called ‘McCarthyism Watch,’ told Arab News.

“Every person in the US — whether that person is a natural born US citizen, or whether that person is in the US without the proper identification — deserves due process rights. What concerns me most is that immigrants, as well now as some US citizens, are being deprived of these due process rights,” said Rothschild.

But Rep. Gekas said tracking those who are in the US illegally, including those already under deportation orders, is important to national security.

“There are thousands among those millions, perhaps millions among those millions, who have exactly that kind of mindset — to do harm to our country, to be or become terrorists,” said Rep. Gekas.