Looking at the Special Registration Program, one of several questionable government responses made after the attacks of 9/11, Aliens Among Us follows several families of Arab, Persian and South East Asian descent, illuminating the treatment they received based on their origin, not on their action.
In 2003, former Attorney General John Ashcroft created a terror prevention program, called Special Registration. While it was highly publicized and criticized internationally, it went virtually ignored in the US media. Men between the ages of 18 and 64, from twenty-five designated countries, were forced to register with the Justice Department. Twenty-four of the twenty-five countries were predominately Muslim; North Korea was the 25th country identified.
The film profiles families whose lives have been permanently disrupted by the program and its long-lasting impact on their communities. It reveals, these are average families, fathers, brothers and sons who have long considered America their home. They have the same worries and joys as any American family – but they have been stamped with the stigma of “potential threat”.
While the Special Registration program ended in 2004, it resulted in a vast database that local, state and federal law enforcement officials are still using to track the Arab, Persian and South East Asian men who willingly registered.
Contrasting ideas of home, culture and identity with headlines portraying these people as dangerous, Aliens Among Us questions the drastic measures our government implemented to protect us from an unknown enemy.
