Los Angeles 8
Court ruling robs immigrants of rights
By
Preston Wood
Los Angeles
In a sweeping setback to First Amendment rights to free
speech, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that immigrants living in
the U.S. can be singled out and deported for their political
views.
The ruling addresses a 12-year effort to deport eight
Palestinian rights activists for organizing support for the
struggle of the Palestinian people to self-determination and a
Palestinian state.
The government says these activists were targeted for
deportation because they supported the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, a militant force against Israeli
occupation of Palestinian lands. The U.S. government
characterizes the PFLP as "terrorist."
This is consistent with government and media practices here
to define Arab people struggling for justice as "terrorists."
Over 50 years ago, the lands belonging to the Palestinians were
stolen by the newly-created Zionist state of Israel, with full
backing of the U.S. and Britain. Today, millions of
Palestinians are still refugees and without a country.
Michel Shehadeh, one of the L.A. 8, is still a leading
activist in Los Angeles. He is Western Director for the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, an organizer for
the rights of Arab immigrants, and prominent in organizing
support for the Palestinian people.
Shehadeh has also organized against the U.S.-led sanctions
against Iraq. He is chair and co-founder of the Los
Angeles-based Save the Iraqi Children Committee, which has
mobilized thousands against the sanctions and U.S. bombing of
Iraq.
The past 12 years have been a nightmare for Shehadeh and his
family, starting in 1987 when 13 INS agents raided his Long
Beach apartment with guns drawn while he was with his
3-year-old son. Of the ruling, Shehadeh told Workers World,
"It's McCarthyism all over again. But this time it's not
communists but immigrants who are the target. This ruling
should not be allowed to stand, and we must mobilize to nullify
it.
"This is a terrible, severe blow to immigrants' civil
liberties in this country. I feel badly not only for my family,
but for the cause of immigrants which this decision sets back
many, many years."
Not criminals but immigrants
Not one of the L.A. 8 has ever been accused of any criminal
act. Their only so-called "crime" was to support the rights of
the Palestinian people. Previously, in fact, federal judges in
California had ruled that the seven Palestinians and one Kenyan
were targeted" for their political views.
The high court's ruling sweeps away those judgements and
gives the INS the go-ahead to begin deportation proceedings
against these and other immigrants, even if they have been
selectively singled out by the government for their political
beliefs.
This shocking decision, Reno v. American Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee, further intensifies the pattern
of discrimination and harassment of immigrants which has
escalated over the past decade in the form of detentions, INS
raids, reactionary propositions and ballot measures such as
Prop 187 in California, and police and INS agents' brutality
against immigrant communities.
Arab Americans, considered by many as the community least
defended regarding civil liberties, have been targets of racist
campaigns and harassment by government agencies.
Basing itself on a 3-year-old law, which in effect denies
due process to any immigrant slated for deportation, the
justices swept aside the right of any immigrant to equal
protection under the U.S. Constitution. This although the
Constitution clearly defends everyone, including immigrants,
who simply exercise basic rights.
This thoroughly reactionary law threatens thousands of
immigrant workers and their families--whose children were often
born in the U.S.--with deportation without even a court
hearing. "No court," it reads, "shall have jurisdiction to hear
any case or claim by any alien."
In his majority ruling, Justice Scalia declares that "an
immigrant in this country has no constitutional right to assert
selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation,"
and that the government "should not have to disclose its `real'
reasons for deeming nationals of a particular country a special
threat."
Immigrant rights leaders expressed shock at the ruling. "The
government now has a free rein to target immigrants for
deportation based on their lawful political activities," said
Lucas Guttentag, director of the American Civil Liberties
Union's Immigrant Rights Project.
"Justice Scalia's opinion is nothing short of outrageous,"
said San Francisco attorney Mark Van Der Hout, who represented
the activists on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild. "It
relegates immigrants to a second-class status that is
reminiscent of the political witch hunts of the McCarthy era."
(L.A. Times, Feb. 27) .
Supporters of the Los Angeles 8 have vowed to keep fighting
against this reactionary ruling until it is repealed.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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