“This was profiling,” said Michael Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School who helped lead the research effort. He added that the findings raised questions about both the effectiveness and the propriety of the program. “The resources devoted to this were enormous,” he said, “but the results clearly were not.”

Not only did ICE engage in profiling, it apparently did so for a political purpose. It cannot be a coincidence that the foreigners who were arrested for immigration violations as a result of the investigation were arrested shortly before the presidential election. Was the "investigation" just a ruse to drum up support for the fiction that the Bush administration was busy protecting "real America" from terrorists?

It's time to put an end to profiling.

The issue of ethnic profiling in counterterrorism programs has taken on added significance because of new Justice Department guidelines that go into effect Dec. 1 and give investigators even broader authority to open terrorism investigations without evidence of wrongdoing. The American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups argue that the new guidelines will allow federal investigators to make targets of Muslims, Middle Easterners and others without evidence of links to terrorist groups.

The Obama administration should tear up those guidelines.