A Brooklyn federal judge dealt a blow to a group of Muslim men who claim they were unlawfully rounded up and detained immediately after 9/11 - ruling that authorities were well within their rights to hold illegal immigrants as they investigated the terror attacks.
"After the September 11 attacks, our government used all available law-enforcement tools to ferret out the persons responsible for those atrocities and to prevent additional acts of terrorism," Judge John Gleeson wrote in a 99-page decision made public yesterday.
"We should expect nothing less," the judge said.
Gleeson tossed out portions of a class-action lawsuit originally filed in 2002 against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI head Robert Mueller, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the warden of Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center and numerous prison guards.
Gleeson - the lead prosecutor in the 1992 racketeering and murder trial that put mob boss John Gotti away for life - said "the government was allowed" to make the immigration roundups.
Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said: "The department is very pleased that the court upheld the decision to detain plaintiffs, all of whom were illegal aliens, until national security investigations were completed and plaintiffs were removed from the country."
A spokesman for the group suing the government said it would appeal Gleeson's ruling.
