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Background on Abdel-Muhti vs. Ashcroft On Mar. 30 Federal judge Yvette Kane will hold a hearing on "Abdel-Muhti v. Ashcroft," a habeas corpus petition seeking the release of Palestinian immigrant Farouk Abdel-Muhti after 23 months in immigration detention. This will be the first hearing in a case which the Associated Press's Wayne Parry once described as "emblematic among immigrant rights advocates of the post-Sept. 11 roundup" of Muslim and Arab immigrants by US immigration officials. Abdel-Muhti has been held in administrative detention--that is, without criminal charges--since his arrest in Queens, New York, in April 2002. In the nearly two years since then, US officials have used an array of delaying tactics, evasions, misleading arguments, outright lies and outrageous--sometimes laughable--slanders in an effort to hide the basic fact of the case: Abdel-Muhti's protracted detention is unlawful. Who Is Farouk Abdel-Muhti? Farouk Abdel-Muhti was born in 1947 in the village of Al- Janiah, in the West Bank's Ramallah district, at a time when the area was administered by the British. Abdel-Muhti came to the Western Hemisphere in the early 1960s, living at various times in the US and in several Latin American countries. In the early 1970s he settled in the New York area, where he has lived ever since. In the middle 1970s Abdel-Muhti came to the attention of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS, which in March 2003 was replaced by several bureaus of the Department of Homeland Security). In 1975 an immigration judge ruled that Abdel-Muhti was living illegally in the US and ordered him deported. However, there was no way to carry out the deportation, since the West Bank was now controlled by Israel, which does not allow the return of people who left the Palestinian territories before the Israeli occupation began in 1967. Abdel-Muhti continued to live openly in the New York area, engaging in a number of public political activities, with a focus on Palestinian rights and issues relating to immigration and Latin America. In 1994 the US government reopened his case. An immigration judge again ruled that his residence in the US was illegal and issued a final order of deportation in September 1995, despite the fact that Abdel-Muhti was then the sole care- giver for his teenage son, a native-born US citizen. Abdel- Muhti's attorney filed a motion to reopen the proceedings; the immigration judge denied the motion, but not until January 1999. As before, the immigration authorities left Abdel-Muhti alone as he continued to live in New York and engage in public political activities, at times even appearing as a speaker or media liaison at events and rallies. In March 2002 he began working regularly at community radio station WBAI-FM arranging interviews with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. One month later INS agents and New York City police agents arrested him, supposedly in order to carry out the 1995 deportation order- -even though immigration authorities had known for more than 25 years that they could not deport him. Abdel-Muhti vs. Ashcroft Abdel-Muhti's legal team filed a habeas corpus petition before federal judge Faith Hochberg in Newark, NJ, on Nov. 6, 2002, after the US government had held Abdel-Muhti for more than six months. The petition--which named US attorney general John Ashcroft and several other government officials--was based on the Supreme Court's June 2001 decision in Zadvydas vs. Davis, which holds that immigrants like Abdel-Muhti with a final order of deportation cannot be held indefinitely unless the government seems likely to be able to deport them in the reasonably foreseeable future. The suit was filed in New Jersey because Abdel-Muhti was being held in the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey; he'd been held earlier in two other New Jersey country jails, Middlesex County Jail and Camden Correctional Facility. The government responded in December, 2002. The government's position was based on three claims:
The claim that Abdel-Muhti was not cooperating was based on the peculiar idea that since he had misrepresented his identity in the 1960s, everything he had said since then was suspect; this, according to the government, made it impossible to establish his nationality and obtain the travel documents the US would need to deport him. (In fact, Abdel-Muhti has been consistent about his identity ever since he was detained by the INS in 1975. For his case in 1994-95 he produced his birth certificate, issued by Jordan in 1960 when it was administering the West Bank, and a family friend who had been present in Al- Janiah at the time of Abdel-Muhti's birth testified to his identity.) On Feb. 19, 2003, just two months after asserting that Abdel-Muhti could be deported in the near future, the government suddenly transferred Abdel-Muhti--not to Honduras or the West Bank but to York County Prison in Pennsylvania. The US then moved to have the habeas petition moved to federal court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, near York; Judge Hochberg granted the change of venue in May. The move ensured a series of delays: the filing of motions for and against a change of venue, the assignment of a new judge, and the time the new judge would need to familiarize herself with the case. The final result of the government's stalling tactics was a delay of as much as six months. Abdel-Muhti's transfer from New Jersey also put him in a place nearly 200 miles from his family, his supporters and his legal team, and made him less accessible to media based in the New York area. Shortly before his transfer, Abdel-Muhti had gotten coverage in various national media outlets, including the New York Times and National Public Radio; this was in part because of his participation in a hunger strike in January 2003 at the Passaic County Jail. The Government Finds New Ways to Stall Over the summer of 2003 the case was assigned to federal judge Yvette Kane, who reviewed it and then requested updated briefs. Abdel-Muhti's legal team filed an updated brief in October 2003, and the government responded in November. Meanwhile, in October the government moved Abdel-Muhti back to New Jersey, although it didn't try to move the case a second time--the habeas petition remains in Harrisburg. By now events had already disproved two of the three main arguments the government used in its December 2002 reply. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, which assumed many of the enforcement functions of the old INS) had already carried out two mass deportations flights of Palestinians, in May and in August of 2003. Abdel-Muhti was not on them. (Nor was he on a third flight, in November of 2003.) On October 7 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mission in Washington, DC--which represents the Palestine National Authority in US immigration matters--confirmed in writing that it could not issue travel papers to Abdel-Muhti. As for Abdel-Muhti's Honduran connection, he had long since admitted that the Honduran papers he used as a teenager in the middle 1960s were not his. Honduran authorities made it clear that an extensive investigation showed that Abdel-Muhti was not Honduran. (The Honduran consulate in New York confirmed this in a letter dated February 5, 2004.) As its arguments collapsed, the government turned to further delaying tactics. In its November reply, the government said that it was conducting an internal review--known as a "File Custody Review"--on or about November 25 to determine whether Abdel-Muhti should be released, and requested that the case be dismissed or held in abeyance for 30 days pending the results of the review. The 30-day period passed in December with no report from the government. On January 21, 2004, Judge Kane issued an order giving the government 10 days to produce the results of the custody review and to explain its reasons for continuing to keep Abdel-Muhti in custody. The government waited until the last possible moment to respond, taking advantage of a federal court rule which counts only business days toward the 10-day deadline. As evidenced in the exhibits attached to the government's response, Deportation Officer Ruben Perez sent his decision on the custody review to the Headquarters Post-Order Detention Unit (HQPDU) on November 26. Yet HQPDU Director John Tsoukaris issued his decision on the custody review only on February 4--the last day allowed by the judge--in a letter provided to Abdel-Muhti at Hudson County Jail in Kearny, New Jersey, and included with the exhibits. The government also informed Abdel-Muhti of his "failure to comply" (with efforts to deport him) in a document dated February 3, 2004, one day before the deadline set by the judge. Proliferating Aliases, Weapons of Mass Destruction The government's February filing is basically a series of repetitions (sometimes contradictory) of its previous argument that Abdel-Muhti lied in the past and therefore must be failing to cooperate with efforts to deport him now. At times the documents read like a satire on bureaucratic incompetence. For example, the government claims that Abdel-Muhti has used aliases and claimed citizenship or nationality in many other countries, but fails to give any examples other than two incidents 40 years ago. In addition, government officials keep changing their minds about how many aliases Abdel-Muhti has supposedly used, referring in the brief itself to "at least 20" and in various attachments as "at least five," "at least 10" and "at least 27." Government spokespeople have always insisted that the case is purely an immigration matter. Deportation Officer Perez's November 25, 2003 "recommendation," part of the administrative custody review process, gives a different picture. Perez says: "Mr. Abdel-Muhti is a person of international intrigue.... Particularly concerning are reports of his involvement with subversive organizations...." Perez gave no specifics on this allegation. In fact, Abdel- Muhti's activism has been public and legal: he has organized such events as ecumenical conferences of Jews, Christians and Muslims; demonstrations around Palestinian and human rights issues; and vigils for immigrant workers killed in construction accidents. In addition to appearing on WBAI, he has been interviewed in the New York Spanish-language newspaper El Diario-La Prensa, on Spanish- language television and in the Arabic-language press. Elsewhere Perez cites a report from Middlesex County Jail, faxed to the INS on July 15, 2002, which claims that Abdel-Muhti was part of a group of people "attempting to recruit other inmates to become Muslims and rewarding them with money." Perez does not explain how Abdel-Muhti would have obtained the money for this activity while in prison, or why there would have been problem if he had actually been engaged in the constitutionally protected activity of proselytizing for a religion. (Abdel-Muhti in fact denies attempting to convert anyone to Islam while in prison.) Perez even brings in one of the current administration's favorite standbys--"weapons of mass destruction." "The report also claims that Abdel-Muhti is endorsing anti-American rhetoric and has knowledge of briefcase nuclear bombs in the United States," Perez writes. Why Abdel-Muhti's Case Is "Emblematic" Unfortunately, Abdel-Muhti's case is not unique. The US government has a long history of using immigration laws to silence dissidents, a history that continues to this day. Abdel- Muhti is just one of a number of activists detained by the US in 2002 on the pretext of immigration violations or procedures. Among the others were fellow Palestinian Amer Jubran, a Boston- area activist; Ahmed Bensouda, a United Arab Emirates national who was active in Palestinian causes in the Chicago area; and Roger Calero, a US permanent resident born in Nicaragua who works for two socialist publications, The Militant and Perspectiva Mundial. (Jubran eventually accepted voluntary departure to Jordan; the government dropped its case against Calero in the summer of 2003.) Abdel-Muhti is also just one of hundreds or even thousands of immigrants held in protracted administrative detention while the US falsely claims to be arranging their removal from the country. Some are stateless, like Farouk; others are from countries like Cuba which have a record of not accepting deportees from the US. In January 2004, Christina DeConcini of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) wrote Department of Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson to protest the situation of these "indefinite detainees," also often referred to as "lifers." Documenting 10 individual cases, DeConcini charged that "ICE detention and removal officers at the local and headquarters levels consistently fail to follow the law.... In several of the attached cases, headquarters has issued decisions that violate the law...." She noted that there are many other cases; the ones cited "are simply provided in order to clearly illustrate... systemic problems with the post-order custody review process." Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti March 23, 2004 ========================================================= Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti PO Box 20587, Tompkins Square Station, New York, NY 10009 Phone: 212-674-9499 * Email freefarouk@yahoo.com Websites: www.freefarouk.org * freefarouk.netfirms.com ========================================================= |
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