Over 600
Foreigners Subject to Secret Immigration Hearings in U.S.
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This
“raises a number of additional questions, including why closed
hearings were necessary for so many people,” Levin said.
.
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WASHINGTON,
July 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than 600 immigrants,
detained in a post-September 11 crackdown on foreign nationals, have
been jailed and processed in controversial secret immigration
hearings, according to new figures from the U.S. Justice Department.
Civil
rights activists said the figures - first made public Wednesday, July
17 - reveal the extensive use of blanket powers introduced last year
along with sweeping new anti-terrorist laws, Agence France-Presse
(AFP) reported.
“It's
clear that an enormous amount of people have been subject to secret
proceedings which are inconsistent with the American system of
justice,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the Immigrants' Rights
Project for the American Civil Liberties Union.
What's
more, he said, “there's no suggestion that the 611 people who have
been subject to closed-door hearings had anything to do with 9/11.”
“I
don't think we had any idea that this number of people had been
subjected to closed hearings,” Kary Moss, executive director of the
American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, told the Detroit Free
Press.
Moss
believes most of the people subject to the hearings are facing
deportation.
“The
implications are very serious,” Moss said. “If none of these
people have been charged with any criminal law violations, then
[Attorney General] John Ashcroft has essentially on his own created
two systems of justice in this country.”
The
information came in the form of a letter to U.S. Senator Carl Levin, a
Democrat from Michigan, who wrote to Ashcroft in March seeking
information on the fate of the individuals caught up in the official
dragnet.
“It
took the Justice Department more than three months to produce a
partial response to my letter,” Levin said, AFP reported.
This
“raises a number of additional questions, including why closed
hearings were necessary for so many people,” he added.
Levin,
who heads up the permanent subcommittee on investigations, undertook
to press the department further.
According
to the letter from assistant attorney general Daniel Bryant, dated
July 3, the Immigration and Naturalization Service detained 752
individuals between September 11, 2001 and June 24, 2002.
Some
81 of those remain in INS custody, although Bryant refused to
elaborate on their “status,” on the grounds that the publication
of such information “would adversely impact our pending criminal and
terrorism investigations.”
In
addition, the department's criminal arm detained 129 people on federal
criminal violations in connection with the terror probe, of which 76
remain in custody, Bryant said.
Critics
of the crackdown - which targeted men of Arab or Muslim background in
large measure - have complained it amounts to a violation of Arab and
Muslim civil rights on a par with the internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II.
And
civil rights groups and newspapers have brought two legal challenges
against the September 21 order by U.S. Immigration Judge Michael
Creppy, who empowered U.S. immigration courts to hold the closed-door
hearings, which have been the lightning rod for much of their
criticism.
In
April, a U.S. district judge in Detroit ruled the closed hearings
unconstitutional and ordered the secret immigration hearings of a
Michigan-based Muslim fund-raiser be opened. A federal judge in New
Jersey also rejected the policy.
The
government is appealing both rulings .
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