WASHINGTON - 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.
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.
Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an "enemy combatant," a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
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."
Lieut. Gen. John L. DeWitt is famous for Exclusion Order No. 34. Dewitt ordered Japanese-American citizens to leave the West Coast. DeWitt asked state Governors to take them in. Only Governor John H. Tolen would take them in. Nine Governors replied, "No Japanese wanted—except in concentration camps." The courts upheld Toyosaburo Korematsu's conviction for not leaving his home and state.
Like curfew, exclusion of those of Japanese origin was deemed necessary because of the presence of an unascertained number of disloyal members of the group, most of [323 U.S. 214, 219] whom we have no doubt were loyal to this country. It was because we could not reject the finding of the military authorities that it was impossible to bring about an immediate segregation of the disloyal from the loyal that we sustained the validity of the curfew order as applying to the whole group. In the instant case, temporary exclusion of the entire group was rested by the military on the same ground. The judgment that exclusion of the whole group was for the same reason a military imperative answers the contention that the exclusion was in the nature of group punishment based on antagonism to those of Japanese origin. That there were members of the group who retained loyalties to Japan has been confirmed by investigations made subsequent to the exclusion. Approximately five thousand American citizens of Japanese ancestry refused to swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and to renounce allegiance to the Japanese Emperor, and several thousand evacuees requested repatriation to Japan.
Hearsay and the wrong skin color was enough to convict Korematsu of the crime of living in his own home. Korematsu's crime was not reporting with 120,000 other Japanese-Americans to the internment camps. These people were viewed as a threat by xenaphobic people and a Lt. General.
Flash forward to 2002. John Ashcroft decided to revive that dreadful part of American history.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.
Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.
The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.
The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.
Jose Padilla is an American-born citizen. The White House believes they can hold Americans without habeas corpus. The Military Commissions Act states "No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights." Military tribunals are appointed by the President who declares who is an unlawful combatant. Kiss habeas corpus goodbye.
This administration has repeatedly tried to grab power. President Bush falsely claimed that the Patriot Act all provisions needed a court order. Then Bush had the NSA perform warrantless domestic wiretapping. Franklin Roosevelt said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." This administration governs by fear. The White House's fear is reflected in failed policy after failed policy. The tough attitude is just a smoke screen. Bush tried to scare voters by saying, "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses." Bush succeeded into scaring Americans. That's why they voted Democrat.
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