The eleventh floor of the federal building in Newark is not a place anyone visits by choice. The air-conditioning is always either too cold or not cold enough. Even though at this height there would be an impressive view of Manhattan and its bridges, there are few windows. Over the past year this chilly, sunless corridor has often been crowded with men dressed in jailhouse smocks, chained in a line at the ankles, waist and wrists. For many of them, unshaven and stooping to avoid tripping on their shackles, this will be the last they see of America from outside a prison before being placed on a plane, still in chains, and deported to their homes in Africa or Asia. This is New Jersey's US Immigration Courts and these men are "Special Interest" cases, detained in the mass arrests following September 11, 2001, and now awaiting deportation. Their names, docket numbers, arrest records and hearings are all secret for reasons of national security.

The total number of people detained under the Special Interest label is not known; estimates are generally in the area of 1,200. More than 750 of these men, according to court filings in Washington, turned out not to be terrorists or criminals but immigrants who overstayed their visas. The majority of them had their cases decided at the Newark federal building, the Grand Central of 9/11 detentions.

Back in February, I attempted to watch one of these cases from the public benches of Judge Annie Garcy's court. As a reporter for the New Jersey Law Journal, I had been contacted by the lawyers for Malek Zeidan, a Syrian ice-cream salesman. Given his country of origin, "he has a very understandable fear of such proceedings," one of his attorneys said. After Judge Garcy threw me out, the Law Journal sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department for the right to attend the hearings. Three similar suits have been filed in other jurisdictions; all seek media access under the First Amendment to either the detainees' identities or their hearings. We won our case earlier this year, but the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia reversed the ruling on October 8. All three judges on the panel hinted that they believed the US Supreme Court would have the final say, a position bolstered by the fact that a different appeals court in Detroit reached the opposite conclusion--a conflict that only the Supremes can resolve.

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