|
U.S.
Rights Groups Disturbed By Assault On Immigration Rights
By
Steve Smith, IOL Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON,
Feb. 27 (IslamOnline) – U.S. rights groups have criticized Attorney General
John Ashcroft's expanding attempts earlier this week to cut the due process for
immigrant rights, principally following last September's attacks.
Ashcroft's
new ''scheme would effectively deny thousands of innocent immigrants their
constitutionally guaranteed day in court and put their fate solely in the vest
pocket of the Attorney General,'' says Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Ashcroft's
newest move calls for halving the number of judges on the Board of Immigration
Appeals (BIA). He sees them as an obstacle rather than a partner in the campaign
against terror.
He
is also to impose stringent time limits on the Board to consider appeals from
non-citizens facing deportation, and to empower single BIA judges, rather than
the usual three-judge panels, to summarily discharge appeals.
The
plan, announced earlier this month, follows a written appeal to Congress by the
union representing the country's immigration judges to remove their courts from
Ashcroft's control in order to certify ''independence and impartiality in the
hearing process.''
Regulations
adopted since Sep. 11 give the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS),
which reports to the Attorney General, power to capture non-citizens for an
undetermined ''reasonable time'' without charges before being brought before an
immigration judge. In some cases, immigration judges or the BIA who may order
their discharge are effectively overruled.
Earlier
last week the Justice Department blocked the departures of 87 foreign detainees
who had been ordered deported or had agreed to go home, as investigators said
they were still sieving for information that could tie them to foreign terrorism
networks.
Anwen
Hughes, staff attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) in New
York, calls Ashcroft's latest plan enormously disturbing. He says it must be
seen ''in the context of what the Justice Department has been doing over the
last five months in reducing due process protections for immigrants,'' mostly
Muslim or of Arab origin.
Ashcroft
has reportedly issued an undisclosed directive requiring immigration judges to
close their hearings to the public if the INS requests them to do so for
security reasons.
The
ACLU had filed earlier this month a lawsuit on behalf of two local newspapers
and Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, saying that a categorical block on public access to
immigration hearings was “unconstitutional and un-American”.
"If
hearings of this nature are being conducted in secret, how can we be sure that
our justice system is really working and that detainees are being treated
fairly?" said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan.
These
rules helped induce the country's 220 immigration judges, through their union,
the National Association of Immigration Judges, to present a 20-page report
requesting Congress to set up an independent immigration court structure outside
the Justice Department.
''It
is the most fundamental aspect of due process,'' the Association wrote, ''that
one be given the opportunity to present one's case and confront the adverse
evidence in an impartial forum. At present, there is at least the perception
that this is not always provided.''
The
group maintains that Ashcroft is both a supervisor of both the INS, which
indicts immigration cases, and the immigration judges, who arbitrate them.
Having
a presidentially appointed director oversee an independent immigration court
will protect due process "without the mission conflict of prosecutorial and
law enforcement responsibilities," according to the report.
This
awareness grew sharply as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the INS
arrested hundreds of mainly Muslim immigrants in the weeks following the Sept.
11 attacks.
They
held them for weeks, and in some cases months, on minor violations of
immigration law or on no charges at all - and without access to legal advice or
even family members.
At
one point, the Justice Department revealed that more than 1,000 men were being
held at the INS's request, although it constantly refused to make public their
names or why they were being held. The number of non-criminal immigrants still
being held has declined to around 470, according to recent reports.
But
the Justice Department, however, would oppose the request "principally
because the immigration courts and Board of Immigration Appeals exercise the
authority of the Attorney General to enforce the immigration laws of the United
States," according to statements by spokesman Dan Nelson to the Washington
Post.
Immigration
courts were part of the INS until 1983, when the Justice Department created a
separate agency, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, to oversee them.
Alyson
Collins, a senior staffer at Human Rights Watch (HRW), which lately was allowed
to meet a number of detainees, said interviewers found many detainees still
uncertain about their status.
Such
cases have alarmed human rights groups and infuriated immigration judges who,
while still part of the Justice Department, have gained growing independence
over the past 20 years.
In
one notable case, the BIA ruled that the INS's retroactive application of a 1996
law which made immigrants convicted of certain crimes automatically deportable
was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the BIA's ruling last year.
|
