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Expanding on what RL said, most of the controversial sections have never been used by the Attorney General.
For example, Section 412 of the USAPATRIOT Act, regarding indefinite detention of any alien suspected of terrorist links, is often cited by liberals as having disregarded the rights of immigrants after 9/11.
In fact, all 1000 aliens detained since 9/11 were held under pre-PATACT Naturalization & Deportation Laws. These laws allow the Govt. to detain aliens, with expired/invalid visas, until they can be deported to their native country. All detained aliens have the right to a deportation hearing and those that did request it were given one. Really the only thing we saw different after 9/11 was the government enforcing laws they already had available to them.
If sec.412 is ever used, the Attorney General has to certify the detention with probable cause of espionage and/or terrorist activity within 7 days. The detention lasts until the alien is removed from the US through deportation proceedings.
Just the other day Al Gore cited abuse of sec 412 in his Bush bashing speech for moveon.org, obviously facts aren't important to the former VP.
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