Supreme Court Rules Against L.A. Eight: Resident Aliens May Be Deported For Political Activity

By Rachelle Marshall

After 12 years and numerous lower court rulings in their favor, seven Palestinians and a Kenyan now face deportation for having raised money for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine back in the 1980s. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision on Feb. 24 that First Amendment guarantees do not apply to immigrants. Two of the defendants, Khader Hamide and Michel Shehada, are longtime legal U.S. residents. The other six, including Hamide’s wife, are charged with minor technical violations of the immigration laws, such as failing to take enough credits to remain qualified for a student visa.

In 1987, on a tip from the Los Angeles chapter of B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League, agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service burst into the homes of six Palestinian men and a woman from Kenya and dragged them away in shackles. They arrested a seventh Palestinian man a few days later while he was in taking a final exam at a community college in San Bernardino. Although none had ever committed a crime or engaged in violence, they were held incommunicado in maximum security cells for two and a half weeks. Hamide, who is a marketing consultant, said afterward, “I did not know day from night... I did not know where my wife was. I could not make phone calls.”

The INS originally charged them with advocating “world Communism” and told the press they were “terrorists.” That charge was later dropped, and instead the INS moved to deport them for supporting “terrorist activity.” The PFLP, like Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, had committed terrorist acts, but it also raised money for charitable purposes. Evidence obtained through surveillance showed that the defendants’ activities chiefly involved taking part in fund-raising dinners. Former FBI Director William Webster said at the time that “if they had been U.S. citizens, there would not have been a basis for their arrests.”

Lawyers for the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild who defended the group that came to be called “the L.A. Eight” argued that they were being subjected to selective prosecution because their cause was unpopular. No one had ever been punished, for instance, for raising money for the Contra forces in Nicaragua or Kurdish rebels in Turkey. In 1996 both the U.S. District Court for Central California, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the government’s efforts to deport the eight defendants, with the Court of Appeals ruling that aliens are entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment.

Palestinians can be singled out for prosecution and the INS does not have to explain why.

That ruling was the one overturned by the Supreme Court in February, in a decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia and supported by the other five conservatives on the court. Scalia wrote, “When an alien’s presence in this country is illegal, the government does not offend the Constitution by deporting him.” Nor does the government “have to disclose its ‘real’ reasons for deeming nationals of a particular country a special threat,” he added. In other words, Palestinians can be singled out for prosecution and the INS does not have to explain why.

The justices were originally expected to consider only a relatively minor procedural matter, so the decision came as a surprise, especially to the defense attorneys who were not prepared to argue the issue of selective enforcement and so in effect were blind-sided. The defendants now have only a limited opportunity to appeal, since such rights were sharply restricted by the Illegal Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1998. Because of broad support for the L.A. Eight among civil liberties organizations, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, there will undoubtedly be further action on this case. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court and the INS have sent a chilling message to Palestinian and other immigrants that the phrase “land of the free” does not apply to them.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance writer living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.