[Ppnews] Case of the LA8 - U.S. Drops Twenty-Year Effort

[Political Prisoner News]

Friday, November 2nd, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/02/1336234
The Case of the LA8: U.S. Drops Twenty-Year Effort to Deport Arab 
Americans for Supporting Palestinian National Rights



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Prosecutors have ended a 20-year attempt to deport two Palestinian 
Americans for allegedly raising money for the Popular Front for the 
Liberation of Palestine. Earlier this year an immigration judge ruled 
the government violated the defendants' constitutional rights in a 
case he called "an embarrassment to the rule of law." We speak to one 
of the men, Michel Shehadeh, and attorney Marc Van Der Hout. 
[includes rush transcript]

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The U.S. government has dropped a major deportation case dating back 
to the Reagan administration. On Tuesday, the Board of Immigration 
Appeals announced prosecutors will end a twenty-year attempt to 
deport two Palestinian Americans for allegedly raising money for the 
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In 1987, the Reagan administration attempted to bar the two men, 
Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh, and six others on the grounds that 
they were connected to a communist group. The men became known as the 
L.A. Eight. They were never deported because a federal appeals court 
declared the anti-communist law unconstitutional.

Earlier this year, an immigration judge ruled the government violated 
the defendants' constitutional rights in a case he called "an 
embarrassment to the rule of law." The ruling marked the government's 
sixth unsuccessful attempt at prosecution. Under a settlement, Hamide 
and Shehadeh will be allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship in three years.

Michel Shehadeh joins us the phone from California. One of his 
attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout of the National Lawyers Guild, is here 
in Washington.

    * Marc Van Der Hout. Attorney with the National Lawyers Guild. He 
has represented the LA8 for the past 20 years.
    * Michel Shehadeh. Palestinian activist and one of the LA8.

AMY GOODMAN: The US government has dropped a major deportation case 
dating back to the Reagan administration. On Tuesday, the Board of 
Immigration Appeals announced prosecutors will end a twenty-year 
attempt to deport two Palestinian Americans for allegedly raising 
money for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In 1987, the Reagan administration attempted to bar the two men, 
Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh, and six others on the grounds that 
they were connected to a communist group. The men became known as the 
L.A. Eight. They were never deported, because a federal appeals court 
declared the anti-communist law unconstitutional.

Earlier this year, an immigration judge ruled the government violated 
the defendants' constitutional rights in a case he called "an 
embarrassment to the rule of law." The ruling marked the government's 
sixth unsuccessful attempt at prosecution. Under a settlement, Hamide 
and Shehadeh will be allowed to apply for US citizenship in three years.

Michel Shehadeh joins us the phone from California. One of his 
attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout of the National Lawyers Guild, is here 
in Washington, D.C. He has worked on the case for all the twenty 
years, along with attorneys from the ACLU and the Center for 
Constitutional Rights.

Michel Shehadeh, thank you for joining us. This case has taken you 
through four presidential administrations. Your feeling on the 
dropping of the case?

MICHEL SHEHADEH: Well, I'm really thrilled and relieved that, after 
twenty-one years, this day that we were dreaming of it, you know, 
it's here now. We feel vindicated, and this dark cloud and the 
nightmare of this case that felt like a sword hanging over our head 
is finally finished.

AMY GOODMAN: Marc Van Der Hout, you've been there from the beginning. 
How was this case brought?

MARC VAN DER HOUT: The government, from day one, tried to use this 
case to establish its right to go after immigrants in this country 
who have done nothing illegal. William Webster, the head of the FBI, 
admitted when he was being confirmed for the CIA that the government 
had done a three-year undercover operation -- surveillance of Michel, 
Khader and the others -- and had come up with nothing they had done 
illegal, no crimes committed.

They turned it over to immigration and said, "Can you figure out some 
way to deport these people? Why? Because we don't like their views. 
We don't like what they're doing, about their supporting the rights 
to a Palestinian homeland and their organizing efforts in the Los 
Angeles community."

So the government went after them. As you mentioned, the first 
statute, the McCarran-Walter Act, was declared unconstitutional. Then 
Congress passed a law saying we can deport people for providing 
material support for terrorist organizations, and it said in 
furtherance of their terrorist activity. We thought, "Great! Case 
over." They had never been accused of furthering terrorist activity. 
But the government used that to say, we're going to try to deport 
people and establish the right to deport people if they raise money 
for humanitarian causes, distribute literature of an organization 
that also has a military component to it. And that's what this case 
has been about since day one.

AMY GOODMAN: The Walter-McCarran [sic] against communists?

MARC VAN DER HOUT: McCarran-Walter Act, yeah, right.

AMY GOODMAN: McCarran-Walter Act against communists.

MARC VAN DER HOUT: Correct. That was the first statute. That was 
declared unconstitutional. We got that statute declared 
unconstitutional. Congress finally threw it out. That was a 
McCarthy-era relic.

AMY GOODMAN: And they were saying that the Popular Front for the 
Liberation of Palestine is communist?

MARC VAN DER HOUT: Was a communist organization, correct.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did it come to be that at this point, during the 
Reagan administration, during the so-called war on terror, a very 
serious crackdown today, that the case was actually dropped?

MARC VAN DER HOUT: The government lost the case probably six times 
totally in the course of the twenty years. Each time, they went to 
Congress to change the law and tried to get the decisions overruled 
from the courts. Finally, they had to prove their case last year in a 
related case, Aiad Barakat, one of the individuals who was applying 
for citizenship. They tried to deny him citizenship on the same 
grounds: providing material support to the PFLP. The government had 
nothing. They couldn't prove their case. I think finally they 
realized, when they had to come up with evidence, they could come up 
with nothing. And saner minds prevailed finally after twenty -- over 
twenty years, and they decided to drop the case.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the PFLP considered a terrorist organization by the 
Bush administration?

MARC VAN DER HOUT: PFLP has been designated, since 1997, as a 
terrorist organization. They --

AMY GOODMAN: Ten years after these guys had first been charged with it.

MARC VAN DER HOUT: Correct, absolutely. And that's one of the issues 
that has always been in this case. It was not illegal to distribute 
newspapers. We think it's still not illegal to distribute newspapers 
of organizations or to give money for charities, which is one of the 
main things the Bush administration has been doing now, prosecuting 
individuals for raising money for charities that have some remote 
connection, perhaps, to groups abroad that are engaged in military 
struggles, whether it was the PFLP in the '80s or Hamas now or other 
organizations. The government has been using this case to try to 
establish the right to go after people for such activities.

AMY GOODMAN: Michel Shehadeh, tell us, when this first happened in 
1987, what were you doing at the time? How did you learn you were 
under surveillance? And how has this affected you, your family, over 
the last twenty years?

MICHEL SHEHADEH: Well, Amy, this case happened in 1987, on January 26 
of 1987, and I was living in Long Beach then. I was sleeping in my 
apartment with my three-year-old son when about fifteen agents barged 
into my house and handcuffed me and dragged me outside in front of my 
son. And outside, the scene was like a scene from Hollywood. We had 
the local police, three carloads, aiming their guns at the house and 
a helicopter hovering on top of the house. And they took me to 
prison, where we were in custody -- it was then I found out that the 
other seven were also arrested. And we were incarcerated in San Pedro 
State Prison, maximum security for twenty-three days.

It took us a while to find out -- until our attorneys came and 
visited after one week, that we found out the charges and the nature 
of the charges. We didn't know why we were incarcerated. We were 
wondering what, you know, the reason were. And after one week, we 
found out that there was a plan, a secret plan then, that was leaked 
to the newspapers then, was -- the plan was entitled "Alien 
Terrorists and Undesirables: A Contingency Plan." And in the plan 
there were an outline of a test case, and that test case to establish 
a legal precedent, so in case of a war, as the plan says, or an 
incident, then Arab Americans will be round up en masse and put in 
concentration camp, like what happened to the Japanese Americans in 
1945 after Pearl Harbor. And this test case will be to establish that 
legal precedent, so the government will be able to do it. And they 
said that they learned that from the registrations of Iranians in 
1979 during the Iranian Revolution, when they wanted to do a 
registration of the Iranians, and they couldn't, because they didn't 
have the law.

So our attorneys in court were able to prove and establish that the 
process of this case followed the outline of the test case that was 
outlined in their plan to the letter. And so, we believe that we were 
this test case over the years. And, you know, we had six sets of 
charges throughout, because, as Marc has outlined, we were charged 
under the McCarran-Walter Act, then under the 1990 Immigration Act, 
then under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, then under the PATRIOT Act, 
and also under the Real ID Act. So, we were charged retroactively 
also for things allegedly that were done way before the law was established.

And the toll on our lives was really huge, because, can you imagine 
twenty-one years living with uncertainty, stigmatized? You can't get 
a job, because every time you go apply for a job and you get to the 
last stages of the job, somebody googles your name, and then all this 
media and the details of the case comes up, and usually the employer 
will get, you know, scared, or they don't want to deal with people 
who are stigmatized as being or offering aid to terrorism. The 
uncertainty of not being able to plan your life, to go into long-term 
plans, because you don't know if you're going to be deported any 
time. The emotional toll on your family, that the family might be 
broken up if I was deported. My wife and my two American-born kids 
are here. They're all American citizens, and I'm the only one who 
doesn't have this paper and this document, and I can be deported. So, 
can you -- you can imagine this nightmare of twenty-one years. It was 
really hard. It was like torture.

AMY GOODMAN: Marc Van Der Hout, I wanted to ask you a question about 
the judge, Bruce Einhorn, the LA federal immigration judge, who said 
the government's conduct in the case was "an embarrassment to the 
rule of law" that left "a festering wound on" Hamide and Shehadeh, 
who have been in legal and personal limbo for two [decades], as we 
just heard Michel describe. The government's decision to throw in the 
towel came nine months after Einhorn lambasted federal officials for 
violating the men's rights, accusing the government of gross failure 
to comply with instructions to turn over to the men potentially 
exculpatory and other relevant information. What was that information?

MARC VAN DER HOUT: Well, they never turned it over. But the 
government conducted surveillance for three years, wiretaps under the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, video undercover surveillance. 
We wanted to get all those records to prove that everything they had 
done and the government evidence against them was completely legal, 
that they had -- everything they had done was public. The events that 
they did were public events. They raised money at these annual 
celebrations of the anniversary of the Popular Front for the 
Liberation of Palestine. They were public. They advertised on TV, 
etc. We wanted to be able to show that everything the government had 
showed that they were legally -- acting legally.

AMY GOODMAN: Michel, will you bring suit against the government?

MICHEL SHEHADEH: No, because the -- you know, this is like -- the 
government is immune when it comes to cases like that. And that's not 
our interest. You know, we wanted this day to be vindicated and to 
prove that this case has always been a political case, that we have 
done nothing wrong, that all we did is to speak up our mind and our 
hearts and to relay our thoughts to the public in regards to the 
Palestinian struggle and to educate for Palestinian 
self-determination. That's always been our interest, and that's what 
remains the case.

And the idea that the truth came out is, to us, is a big payoff. We 
are finally free, and the government has admitted that for twenty-one 
years that we have done nothing wrong. And, actually, I just read the 
statement that said that the government says that after a thorough 
examination they found out that we are not a danger to this country. 
And I said, you know, if they listened to us from the beginning, you 
know, this would have saved twenty-one years of torture for us and a 
lot of expenses for the tax dollars that have been spent on 
fabricated, trumped-up charges. And this money should have been spent 
somewhere else.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Michel Shehadeh, I want to thank you for being 
with us, one of the LA 8. The government has finally dropped charges 
against him. And also Marc Van Der Hout, thank you very much for 
joining us, of the National Lawyers Guild --

MARC VAN DER HOUT: Thank you very much, Amy. I appreciate it.

AMY GOODMAN: -- represented this case for the full twenty years.




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