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Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States Government began detaining people who fit the profile of the suspected hijackers: mostly male, Arabic, or Muslim noncitizens. According to Justice Berman, they had arrested 1,182 people as of November 5, 2001.[1] By late November 2001, more than 1,200 people had been detained.[2] A document made and published by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) contained information about the detainees.[3]
The office of the Inspector general released a report in June of 2003 that stated: "The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detained 762 aliens as a result of the PENTTBOM investigation". Of those 762 people, 24 had an immigration violation prior to the September 11th attacks. They also reported "the remaining 738 aliens were arrested between September 11, 2001, and August 6, 2002, as a direct result of the FBI's PENTTBOM investigation."[4] At that time, the government announced that it suspected 10 to 15 of the detainees as being al Qaeda sympathizers, but said that no evidence links them directly to the attacks.[citation needed] Opponents[who?] of the detentions claimed that the government had no valid grounds for these detentions.