Remember how we were assured by the Republicans during the debate in Congress that the people to whom the military commissions act applied were those "captured on the battlefield" in places like Afghanistan, who were actively engaged in warfare against the United States, and that it was ridiculous to give them constitutional rights in our courts. Well, it seems that those assurances are no longer operative. Our Department of Justice, for which I am happy to say that I FORMERLY spent 15 years of my life employed, has filed papers in the appeal of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, who was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States, which make the broadest possible claims for the scope of this bill.
According to
an AP article, <Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.</p>
In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.
That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes.
"It's pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri. "It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention."
It has long been held that aliens present in the United States are entitled to the same due process right as American citizens. (Not necessarily the same rights to government benefits, and certainly not the same rights to stay in the country, but the basic due proces rights not to be held without the right to a trial.) Our long and proud tradition in that regard is now coming to an end if the Bush administration has its way.
Many of us argued passionately at the time it was being debated in Congress that the military commissions bill (aka the "torture bill") was a dangerous outrage, but shockingly enough, even some Democrats voted for it, included Sherrod Brown, who was actively supported by many of us on this site. I would urge everyone on this site to contact their Senators and Representative to DEMAND that ths outrage of a piece of legislation be either promptly repealed or amended to DRASTICALLY restrict its scope. And those who worked for or contributed to Sherrod Brown's campaign, PLEASE contact him and demand that, as one of his first acts as a Senator, he voted to either repeal or greatly amend this travesty FOR WHICH HE VOTED.
And make no mistake about it: Although this legislation is being used against a suspected al Qaeda "sleeper agent" today, it may be used tomorrow against the hundreds of thousands if not millions of refugees from the world's conflicts who came to our country, and have greatly enriched it, thinking that America was indeed "the land of the free" and that the words on the base of the Statue of Liberty actually meant something.
Many of those people have had some contacts in their home countries with groups that the Bush administration might well consider "terrorist," such as the former guerilla groups in Guatemala and El Salvador, or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Especially in view of the fact that the Bush administration is now professing to be worried about the "leftist threat" in Latin America and interested in expanding its training of Latin American militaries, as described in this diary which unfortunately just dropped off the Recommended List (but which belongs back on it for a while in my opinion), these refugees, and all Americans who care about them, should be in real fear of what is next.
Even in the case of suspected "al Qaeda sleeper agent" al-Marri, it seems to me that if we have reliable evidence that he is what we claim, we should either charge him criminally or deport him back to Qatar. Or is Mr. al-Marri just another ordinary foreign student like Sami al-Hussayen, a computer science student at the University of Idaho, whose arrest John Ashcroft breathlessly announced with the explanation that Mr. al-Hussayen was part of "a terrorist threat to Americans that is fanatical, and it is fierce," but who was acquitted of all terrorism-related charges by a jury of ordinary Idaho citizens (not normally known for their leftism or sympathy for terrorists) after a very short deliberation? If this administration gets its way, we'll never know, because there will be no trial for Mr. Al-Marri, who will simply be held forever without a trial or any right to judicial review.
I write this from El Salvador, one of the many countries in the Americas where people were simply "disappeared," never to be heard from again. I never thought that I would live to see the day that a United States government would be arguing for the right to simply "disappear" people arrested in the United States, whether those people are citizens or aliens, but unfortunately, that day is now upon us.
In what would be a delicious irony if this entire situation were not so sad, our government announced yesterday that it was revising the citizenship test to have it concentrate more on "applicants' grasp of American democracy."
"The idea is not to toss up roadblocks, it's to make sure people who apply for citizenship and want to become citizens understand and adhere to the values we have as a society, the values that are part of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights," said Shawn Saucier, spokesman for the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Would that we could give the new test to our President and the other leaders of our government, and revoke their citizenship if they fail it.