Hearing calls attention to Los Angeles 8

The 18-year-old case of the Los Angeles Eight was thrust into the spotlight once again when a deportation hearing was scheduled in Los Angeles for July 13—and then postponed again. As of July 12 it isn’t known when or whether the hearing will be rescheduled.

The L.A. Eight are seven Palestinian men and one Kenyan woman. In 1987, gun-
toting FBI agents raided their southern California homes in the middle of the night and arrested them. The arrests culminated a long witch-hunt-type investigation.

Initially, charges were based exclusively on the Red-Scare-era McCarran-Walter Act: that the eight supported the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and had raised funds and passed out literature that aided the Marxist group. At that time, the PFLP was the second biggest group among those that made up the Palestine Liberation Organization.

For the eight, the case seems eternal. They struggle to lead normal lives, raise families and work. The threat of deportation looms for two respected Palestinian activists, Michel Shehadeh and Khader Hamide. The fate of their cases may signal what will happen with some of the others.

Decisions in the case have already had a significant legal impact, some progressive and some setbacks. Based on it, in 1988 a federal district judge ruled the McCarran-Walter Act unconstitutional because it denied immigrants their First Amendment rights. Congress repealed McCarran-Walter two years later, but the repeal allowed pending cases to proceed.

A Supreme Court opinion that came about as a result of this case stated, “An alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation.” This was exactly what the lawyers for the L.A. Eight had done.

The high court went on to state that the government “should not have to disclose its ‘real’ reasons for deeming nationals of a particular country a special threat—or indeed for simply wishing to antagonize a particular foreign country by focusing on that country’s nationals.”

Scalia allowed racial profiling

In effect, Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the opinion, validated the type of profiling that was put into wide use after Sept. 11, 2001.

Throughout the years, charges have been dropped and added. The Clinton administration’s repressive 1996 anti-immigrant law allows the government to use guilt by association in the case of immigrants, thereby strengthening the prosecution of the Eight. Charges were added later under provisions of the Patriot Act that allow prosecution for things that were not illegal at the time they occurred.

In 1987, no one--citizen or not—could be prosecuted for association with an organization, regardless of the group’s relationship with the U.S. government. Yet the case proceeded—first based on the PFLP’s Marxist character, then on the FBI’s assertion that the PFLP intends ‘destruction of property,’ and, still later, on the government’s accusation that the PFLP intends to do violence and assassinate leaders of states.

This is also the first instance of the Patriot Act being used to try to deport anyone. In fact, provisions of the Patriot Act were written specifically to prosecute the L.A. Eight.

Over the years, as the case wound its way through the courts, the defendants and their attorneys were continually surprised by the U.S. government’s determination to prosecute, especially given the case’s flimsy legal foundation and the fact that it flouts the constitution.

A recent two-part article in the Los Angeles Times attributed that to the dogged and almost obsessive pursuit of convictions by one FBI agent named Ted Knight. The article, which was somewhat objective and sympathetic to the defendants, pointed out that Knight was often at odds with others in the FBI because he wanted to continue his investigation.

It’s true that Knight has fanatically pursued the conviction of these innocent people. But at a certain point he not only received the resources he needed from superiors in the FBI, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service became a factor in the case; immigration laws were used to hound the defendants when the government felt its case under the McCarran-Walter Act was too weak.

This was not an example of one determined individual moving mountains. It was an effort that spanned government agencies. And, as the Times piece pointed out, the case became a sort of model for attacks on immigrants after post Sept. 11, 2001.

The case of the L.A. Eight has important implications for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, for everyone’s right to protest in the United States, and for immigrant rights.

The progressive Arab community in Los Angeles, along with anti-war and social-justice organizations, is responding to the latest developments in the case by intensifying the effort to raise funds and educate the general public about this important struggle. A website--www.committee4justice.com—has been set up by organizers. It is a valuable resource for information, including articles by the attorneys as well as from major establishment newspapers, and directions on how to contribute funds.