Wednesday, January 31, 2007

A big win for the LA 8

Tue Jan 30, 2007

Judge Einhorn of immigration court rendered his decision on Tuesday January 30, 2007 in (LA 8) case. The court “finds that the government has failed to carry its burden of proving respondents deportable based on clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence. Therefore, the proceedings against Hamide and Shehadeh are TERMINATED.) The decision said.

Please visit our web site for more information. Please click on the word decision in the body of the article to read the decision. [Editor's note: See article below]

Thanks to all who helped in this case,

Michel Shehadeh
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The Los Angeles Eight Case



Government Seeks Deportation for Magazine Distribution in 1980s

When Administration defenders claim that "there have been no abuses" of the Patriot Act, ask them about the case of Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh. The government seeks to deport these two long-time permanent resident aliens under the Patriot Act for having distributed magazines and raised humanitarian aid in the 1980s in Los Angeles. It seeks to punish these men, neither of whom has ever even been charged, let alone convicted, of a crime, under a law enacted in 2001 for conduct engaged in fifteen years earlier, at a time when the conduct was perfectly legal. And it seeks to deport them for classic First Amendment activity ? the distribution of a magazine.

The case of Hamide and Shehadeh will prove a critical test of the limits of the expansive amendments to immigration law made by the Patriot Act. And because the activities for which the government seeks to deport Hamide and Shehadeh are protected by the First Amendment, it also will prove a test of the scope of immigrants' First Amendment rights. This is the first case in which the government has sought to deport anyone under that Act for distributing literature, and one of the first in which the government has invoked the Patriot Act's "material support to terrorist organization" grounds. It is also one of the longest-running immigration cases in the United States, having begun 18 years ago, in 1987, under an anti-communist immigration law dating back to the 1950s. The case, a kind of modern-day Bleak House, has generated several landmark judicial opinions, and been up to the Supreme Court. It is now back in immigration court, where trial is set to begin July 13, 2005, before Immigration Judge Bruce J. Einhorn.

Born in the West Bank, Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh came to the United States in their college years and have now lived here thirty four and thirty years, respectively. They are lawful permanent residents and hard-working fathers--Hamide, father of three U.S. citizen children, supplies luxury coffee shops; Shehadeh, father of two U.S. citizen children and married to a U.S. citizen, works as a freelance writer and lives in Oregon.

They are now charged with being deportable for having provided "material support" to a "terrorist organization." The organization is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a faction of the PLO headed by George Habash. The government claims that Hamide and Shehadeh provided the PFLP with "material support" in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by distributing its magazine, and by holding two community dinners at which they helped raise money for political activities and humanitarian aid. The money went to support political work in the United States in support of Palestinian self-determination, and humanitarian aid to various social service groups in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. But the government claims that the recipients were tied to the PFLP, and that therefore Hamide and Shehadeh are deportable.

The case began in 1987, when immigration authorities arrested seven young Palestinians and a Kenyan woman--dubbed the "LA 8" by the media--on charges of being affiliated with the PFLP. At that time, the oovernment claimed that they were deportable for being affiliated with a group that "advocated the doctrines of world communism," a deportable offense under the McCarran-Walter Act, a law enacted in 1952, at the height of the McCarthy era. At the time, FBI Director William Webster testified before Congress that the eight "had not been found to have engaged themselves in terrorist activity." Hearings Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Nomination of William H. Webster to be Director of Central Intelligence, 100th Cong. 1st Sess. 94-95 (April 8, 9, 10, May 1, 1987). Mr. Webster further admitted that they "were arrested because they are alleged to be members of a world-wide Communist organization which under the McCarran Act makes them eligible for deportation ... if these individuals had been United States citizens, there would not have been a basis for their arrest." Id.

In 1989, a federal court declared the McCarran-Walter Act charges unconstitutional. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. Meese, 714 F. Supp. 1060 (C.D. Cal. 1989). The court ruled that the First Amendment protects all persons within the United States equally, whether citizens or foreign nationals, and that deporting foreign nationals for their political associations violated the First Amendment. The following year Congress repealed that McCarthy-era law. The government nonetheless pursued deportation under new charges.

In 1995, the same federal court blocked the deportations under the new charges from going forward on the grounds that the government, in violation of the First Amendment, had selectively targeted the group for constitutionally protected political activities. The court reviewed 10,000 pages of evidence submitted by the government, but found evidence only of constitutionally protected political activity. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. Reno, No. CV 87-2107, at 32 n.14 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 29, 1996).

In 1996, however, Congress stripped federal courts of authority to hear such selective-enforcement challenges to deportation, and in 1999 the Supreme Court ruled that the cases could go forward. Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U.S. 471 (1999).

The case is now back in immigration court, where trial is scheduled to being July 13, 2005. The government claims that Hamide and Shehadeh provided material support to the PFLP. Hamide and Shehadeh deny providing such support. They admit that they distributed magazines and sponsored two community dinners, but maintain that they raised money only for domestic political activities of the Committee for a Democratic Palestine, a U.S.-based political organization that engaged in political activity in support of Palestinian self-determination ? and for a handful of charitable social service organizations in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. The trial will focus on Hamide and Shehadeh's political activism in the 1980s, and whether it can be seen as "material support" to the PFLP.

Hamide and Shehadeh have challenged the retroactive application of the Patriot Act to their conduct, engaged in twenty years ago. They also argue that their activities were protected by the First Amendment, and that they did not support the PFLP.

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