On June 2, 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general issued
a report criticizing the department for its treatment of 762 non-citizens
detained on immigration charges during the 11 months after the Sept.
11, 2001 terrorist attacks. According to the report, many of the
detainees--mostly men from countries with large Muslim populations—were
held for unduly long periods of time and under harsh conditions.
Some were kept in 23-hour lockdown, were put in handcuffs and leg
irons whenever they moved outside their cells, and were subject
to "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" from guards.
The report
received extensive news coverage and inspired a number of editorials,
including one from the New York Times denouncing "The
Abusive Detentions of Sept. 11."
Both
the report and the media attention are welcome. But something is
missing here—namely, acknowledgment of the fact that these
same abuses were happening long before Sept. 11 and are continuing
to this day.
As I
write, my friend Farouk Abdel-Muhti is locked down 23 hours and
15 minutes every day in the county prison in York, Pennsylvania
[he has since been transferred to a prison in New Jersey—ed.].
He is handcuffed and shackled when he goes to the clinic or to see
visitors. Guards taunt him and search his cell, supposedly for weapons.
Farouk is nearly 56 and his health is deteriorating. He has been
in custody for 14 months.
What
is he charged with? Nothing. Immigration authorities issued a final
order of deportation against him in 1995, and they say they are
holding him pending his deportation. But Farouk is a stateless Palestinian,
and no country has agreed to accept him.
Can the
authorities hold him indefinitely? The Supreme Court ruled in June
2001 that most immigrants in Farouk's situation should not be held
for more than six months. Farouk's legal team filed a habeas corpus
petition last November asking for his release. The government responded
with a claim that Farouk was interfering with his deportation by
concealing his true identity. (The main basis for this assertion
is that Farouk allegedly used false Honduran papers when he first
entered the US as a teenager in the mid-1960s.)
In February,
when his legal team pushed for a public hearing at which they could
show additional documentation of Farouk's identity as a stateless
Palestinian, the government whisked him away from the Passaic County
Jail in New Jersey to southern Pennsylvania, 185 miles from his
lawyers, family and friends, who are all based in the New York area.
In May the government got the judge in the case, a former US attorney
for New Jersey, to move the habeas case to Pennsylvania as well,
basically taking Farouk back to square one.
Farouk
is a well-known New York political activist, so his situation has
received considerable media attention. Unfortunately, this is the
only way that his case is unique. Another Palestinian we know of
is being held in upstate New York while the government claims to
be trying to secure his travel documents; he has been in detention
since February 2002. There is a Cuban national currently in the
Passaic county facility who has been kept in jail for more than
four years "pending deportation"--even though Cuba shows
no interest in taking him back. These are just a few examples; only
the US government knows how many people it is holding for no crime
but being difficult to deport. We even know of immigrants who have
their travel documents and have agreed to leave the US--and are
still held in prison.
It is
a fine thing to condemn the abusive treatment of immigrants, but
maybe now we should actually end the practice.