Claims that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft approved harsh confinement conditions for immigrants who had no connection to terrorism but were detained following the Sept. 11 attacks because they appeared to be Arab or Muslim were reinstated Wednesday by a divided Second Circuit.
Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley said Ashcroft, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner James Ziglar could be sued for the allegedly punitive conditions imposed on detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn from November 2001 onward.
