“A Never-Ending Saga–The Case of the Los Angeles Eight”

by Michel Shehadeh

On Jan. 13, 1997 Los Angeles Federal Judge Stephen Wilson handed the Justice Department another major defeat in its decade-long campaign to deport me and six other Palestinians and the Kenyan wife of one of them for our views.

Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would still be battling this injustice 10 years after it happened on Monday morning of Jan. 26, 1987, when a force of government agents raided my Long Beach apartment.

Ibrahim, my three-year-old son, and I were sleeping when a persistent knock woke me up. I went to the door. I glanced at the clock on the living room wall: 7 a.m. I got annoyed. Who is knocking at this hour? I peeked through the door’s glass panels. A man and a woman, dressed alike in gray attire, stood outside.

“Yes?” I asked, unable to hide my annoyance.

“We’re from the Immigration and Naturalization Service,” the man said, his fist clenched to his thigh.

“We want to talk to you,” added the woman with a slight smile, sounding calmer than the man.

I felt uneasy. I had applied for citizenship 11 days earlier. Why did they want to talk to me? Why so soon, and why here and not at their office? Pushing my doubts aside I edged the door open.

A violent shove against the door sent me flying back. A horde of agents barged into the apartment from their hiding places outside like a hurricane, weapons drawn, sweating and shouting, “Where are the weapons, where are the weapons?” Several agents seized me, sending rushes of sharp pain throughout my nervous system as they cuffed my hands behind my back and choked my neck with a wrestling hold. Others surged into the rest of the house looking, I presume, for the nonexistent weapons.

Suddenly I saw little Ibrahim entering the living room, screaming and frantically searching for me. One agent grabbed him, sat him on the couch as if he were a stuffed animal.

Instinctively I attempted to move toward the couch. I wanted to reassure my son. The agent’s grip tightened. Rage welled up in me. Ibrahim’s tears, my helplessness to protect him tore into my heart like a dagger. With tear-filled eyes, and a scream that died on my lips, I tried to squirm free.

“Don’t be stupid,” one of the agents holding me said, sensing my emotions. “You don’t want your son to watch you getting hurt.” I froze.

“Can anyone explain to me what is going on?” I finally managed to utter, trying to ease the situation. All I could think of was “protect Ibrahim.”

“You’re under arrest,” a medium-sized chubby agent who appeared in charge shrieked, flashing a paper from his pocket. “You belong to a terrorist organization.” His torrid gaze radiated enough hate to roast me alive. I was blank.

The rhythmic wheezing of the two agents holding me quickened. Their grip tightened. Their hearts pounded on my back, and their breathing slow-barbecued the back of my neck. The air was suddenly saturated with suffocating sweat stench. I fought to stay focused, to think about the agent’s words; trying to comprehend. I failed and my mind strayed.

This was happening in the land of the free. I was once arrested in the West Bank city of Ramallah for participating in a demonstration. We students were protesting Israel’s attempt to replace Arab schools curriculum with its own curriculum. I remembered how defiant and determined I was as I laid down on the floor, 16 years old, hands tied behind my back. My feet were being whipped by a policeman who screeched with each strike: “This is for being a bad boy.” I was being whipped for opposing the Israeli military infringement on our academic freedom. I didn’t know why I was being arrested in America.

“Let’s go,” the agent in charge snapped after he got a “we-found-nothing” signal from the agents returning from the bedrooms.

“You can’t leave my son alone in the house,” I objected in disbelief at what they were about to do. Leaving a three-year-old boy all alone and in a frantic state was another shock to me. This was not supposed to happen in America.

The agents stopped and exchanged confused looks. “Let me call my wife,” I appealed, seizing on their indecisiveness.

“One call,” the agent in charge finally said. “And make it quick, you hear?” I nodded.

I told Maxine not to ask questions, that I was being arrested and to come home fast, and to call Brian, our attorney friend, and to tell him what had happened. I didn’t have time to ask how she felt. The agents started dragging me away as I hung up.

“Let’s wait until my wife gets home. I can’t leave my son alone,” I cried out. The agents holding me hesitated.

“It seems we’re giving him too many options,” one zealous agent said.

“Dad-deeee,” Ibrahim cried out, as I was dragged out of my home.

I saw my neighbors’ faces peering from behind doors. I looked directly into their eyes. They were filled with sympathy. They too didn’t believe what was happening.

“We’ll take care of Ibrahim, don’t worry,” my Chinese next-door neighbor said.

Outside, tense, battle-ready uniformed police, anticipating confrontation, blocked the street in both directions. A helicopter hovered overhead. I struggled to retain reality, even as it dissolved into images and sounds buried in my innermost depths: a refugee camp near Birzeit, my home village in the West Bank, the soldiers, the helicopter, the prisoner, the neighbors, the early morning raid, the fog. It all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, only this time it was happening on the American West Coast, not the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

I was taken to police headquarters, Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles. There I learned I wasn’t the only person detained that morning in simultaneous Dirty-Harry-style dawn raids. With a final arrest a week later, we became the “L.A. 8.” Deemed dangerous, we were detained for 23 days in a maximum security prison like violent criminals. We were charged under a McCarthy-era law, the McCarran-Walter Act, with supporting a terrorist organization.

By now, 10 years later, 10,000 pages of material have been submitted by the government. But in court Judge Stephen Wilson has confirmed our innocence, noting that the evidence indicated that “the plaintiffs had done nothing illegal.”

Four sets of laws were used in this case. All have been declared unconstitutional, but the government keeps coming back. The latest attempt, on Jan. 13, 1997, involved a new law, The Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act. How many more laws to go? Not even the prescient Judge Wilson seemed to have a clue when he termed the case the “Never-Ending Saga.”

The toll on our lives is multiplying. The Los Angeles Eight are multiplying. At the time of the arrest I was the only defendant married with a family. Today each of the Eight has one. But none of us can have a normal family life. The bureaucrats are continuing to make sure of that. They seem to enjoy spending tax dollars for political witch hunts and destroying people’s lives for their political zeal, as attested by the 10,000 pages of meaningless material.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) designated ours as the “Civil Liberties Case of the ’80s,” a distinction that still endures in the ’90s. Our attorneys say it will run right on into the 21st century. Perhaps it is an indication, a test case, of what is awaiting immigrants in the next millenium.

Certainly freedom can never be taken for granted. Perhaps President Clinton will do better in the realm of justice in his second term. But what is not a maybe is the fact that we are determined to see this case through even into the 21st century, to show we have done nothing wrong and that we are being persecuted for nothing but our thoughts.

I’m haunted by a remark made when, at one point in the case, I noted that the agents made a significant mistake during my arrest. They hadn’t read me my rights.

Someone then pointed out that instead of a mistake being committed, “maybe immigrants don’t have rights.” So far that seems to be true. But the overwhelming public support we have received over the past decade, proves that this nation of immigrants would not tolerate this kind of oppression to go on.

I conclude by citing a recent New York Times article (Feb. 17, 1997) addressing the case by columnist Anthony Lewis, entitled: “Enough Is Enough.” He writes: “Our constitutional freedom depends on not allowing the government to break the rules when it moves against unpopular individuals or interests. It is time for Attorney General Janet Reno to end this outrageous case. Enough is Enough.”