Abstract

9/11 and the LA 8

The author claims that Arab immigrants to the United States who campaigned for the liberation of Palestine are being unfairly targeted for deportation under the Patriot Act. The next time you hear Attorney General Ashcroft dismiss complaints about civil liberties abuses under the USA Patriot Act as "built on misrepresentation, supported by unfounded fear [and] held aloft by hysteria," consider the plight of Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh. Born in the West Bank, both men came to the United States in their college years and have now lived here thirty-two and twenty-four years, respectively. They have never been charged with even the most minor criminal offense. Yet in September they learned that the government will seek their deportation under the Patriot Act for distributing Palestinian magazines and raising humanitarian aid in Los Angeles more than twenty years ago. Such activity was legal at that time, and it is plainly protected by the First Amendment. Yet the Bush Administration claims that the Patriot Act authorizes the government to deport the two men. Immigration authorities arrested them sixteen years ago on charges of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The government claimed that the PFLP advocated world communism, making affiliation with it a deportable offense under the McCarran-Walter Act. In 1989 a federal judge declared the McCarran-Walter Act charges unconstitutional. The government nonetheless pursued deportation under new charges. The latest chapter in the LA 8 case, courtesy of the Patriot Act, will do nothing to make us more secure--and much to make us less free.