The Pirates of Homeland Security

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

-- 



A friend sent this to me with the comment:  "Just like [it happened 
to]  Ernst." Indeed there are many similarities, such as the 
conveniently "disappeared" documents that allowed Homeland Security 
to arrest and deport Ernst Zundel!

Ingrid Rimland

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The Pirates of Homeland Security

By GREG MOSES

One by one, the helium-inflated excuses for arresting and imprisoning 
Suzi Hazahza have been popped and now lie on the ground. And the 
single memory humanizing the government that still holds her 
unlawfully behind bars is the look on one Federal Magistrate's face 
Thursday in Dallas when he was told by a US Attorney that Congress 
has stripped the federal bench of any right to order Suzi Hazahza 
freed until a full six months of illegal detention have passed.

Anguish is the word that some observers have used to describe the 
look on the judge's face as he wrestled with the impotence of his 
authority before the power of Homeland Security to arrest and detain 
innocent immigrants.

"Believe it or not, immigration law is replete with that language," 
explains New York immigration attorney Joshua Bardavid from his New 
York office on Friday evening, as sounds of the street honk outside 
his window. "Congress has told the courts that many discretionary 
decisions by immigration authorities are unreviewable." In this case, 
the unreviewable decision involves the unlawful six-month 
imprisonment of an innocent immigrant in the hellish privatized 
Rolling Plains prison of Haskell, Texas.

Over the weekend, Bardavid will work up his motion pleading with the 
Federal Magistrate to exercise his unimpeachable power to enforce the 
Constitution, with its protections against unlawful seizure and 
guarantees of due process. But the argument will be a a tough sell 
politically, because in order to take legal responsibility for Suzi 
Hazahza, the federal courts will have to state plainly that Homeland 
Security is using its discretionary authority to break the 
Constitution on American soil. (Š)

"It is extraordinarily upsetting and frustrating that we can live in 
a system where it is possible that a judge concludes that detention 
is unlawful but that he himself has no authority to release the 
prisoner," says Bardavid. But that could be the best hand-wringing 
effort that the federal courts will make in this case. And it would 
be a nauseating retreat from the principle of habeas corpus at home.

For Suzi Hazahza, the reality of a powerless judiciary branch, 
disabled by a weak Congress, will leave her to the hands of a 
muscular executive power without checks or balances. She will be 
living in a virtual police state until May 3, when the six-month 
deadline for her unlawful detention expires. For the rest of us, that 
leaves a question. If we allow Suzi Hazahza and other innocent 
immigrants to live in a police state for six months at a time, what 
are we allowing Homeland Security to make of America?

On the first Friday in November, 2006 Suzi Hazahza was arrested at 
gunpoint inside her father's home and transported with the rest of 
her family to an immigration jail in Dallas. By the first Sunday in 
November, the administration had scored its Dallas-area headlines 
about the arrest and detention of "criminal aliens" such as the seven 
Hazahas and other immigrant families.

In order to make the case that the pre-election roundup was a hit for 
Homeland Security, immigration authorities posted a press release on 
the internet that included a mug shot of Suzi's 17-year-old brother 
Ahmed, deliberately misidentifying his age as an 18-year-old adult, 
and maliciously publicizing his juvenile delinquency as a burglar. 
There are international laws against the use of children for 
propaganda purposes. But with the administration facing a grim 
election challenge, no trick seemed too dirty to pull. On that first 
Sunday in November, Ahmed was placed into solitary confinement, 
because he was a juvenile in an adult facility at the Rolling Plains 
prison of Haskell, Texas.

Not only did Homeland Security know exactly how old Ahmed was, but 
they knew that his birthday was coming soon. So he was not sent with 
his mother and younger brother to the T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor, 
Texas, where all the other immigrant juveniles of the pre-election 
roundup were sent. By the first Sunday in November, the Hazahza 
family had been split between two Texas prisons, with mother Juma and 
11-year-old Mohammad sent to Hutto, while father Radi was sent to 
Rolling Plains with his two adult daughters and his two oldest sons.

What Homeland Security will not put into a press release is that the 
Hazahza family never tried to hide from anybody. They entered the USA 
legally with visas and applied for asylum to protect themselves from 
politics back home. Although they have been ordered deported to 
Jordan or Palestine, neither nation will approve their travel. All 
the adult members of the family were law abiding citizens. Radi 
worked as a vehicle inspector. His oldest son Hisham worked as a cell 
phone salesman. His oldest daughter Mirvat managed the office of an 
insurance agent and is married to an American citizen. His youngest 
daughter Suzi had devoted herself to the care of her mother Juma and 
was engaged to be married to an American citizen in December.

At the federal magistrate hearing on Thursday, the US Attorney 
admitted that immigration authorities could not prove they had sent a 
letter to Radi Hazahza ordering him to report for a meeting. They had 
not sent the letter with return-receipt requested. They had no 
affidavit from immigration personnel stating that the letter had been 
mailed. They had no service documents.

"I even asked them if they had a photocopy of the envelope," recalls 
Bardavid. But no, they didn't even have that.

Furthermore, the letter they showed the judge misstated the facts of 
the Hazahza immigration case in such a way that it didn't seem to 
arise from within a knowledgeable process. The letter stated that the 
Hazahzas of Palestine and Jordan had been ordered deported to Israel, 
which is a lie. In any case, it was the wrong form.

"That letter was so fundamentally flawed that it can't be given legal 
effect," argued Bardavid in Dallas. "Therefore the detention based on 
that letter is unlawful. Even the US Attorney seemed surprised by the 
errors in the document and promised to look into the matter further."

"I have difficulty grasping in my head this is occurring," says 
Bardavid from his New York office. "The government did not refute any 
allegations that we made about the prison conditions, or the fact 
that the Hazahzas were allegedly sent the wrong form, or lack of 
proof of service for that letter, or that the facts were flawed. The 
premise of their entire case was that this federal court does not 
have jurisdiction in these matters."

Despite the horrible implications for Suzi Hazahza, America should 
send her a thank you note. Thanks to Suzi's unjust treatment we now 
have proof that our Homeland Security machine has pulled loose from 
its Constitutional moorings. Homeland Security has become a pirate 
operation unto itself. Each passing day of Suzi's imprisonment gives 
us one more reason to demand the resignation of Homeland Security 
Secretary Michael Chertoff and immediate action by Congress to strip 
the agency of its power to evade federal court review.

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Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of 
Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy 
of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx at prodidgy.net