Category Archives: Law

A law changes the face of America

Posted on by

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered is running a three part series this week that takes a look at the 1965 Immigration Act. As mentioned at various times on SM, this is the law which is responsible for many of our parents being allowed to legally enter the U.S., as well as the reason many of us are born citizens. The series by NPR is particularly relevant because one can draw comparisons between the immigration debate then and now. There are three to four million people standing in line waiting to get into America legally right now.

The FULL story is an audio story (and contains rich detail in the form of short interviews-12 min long). I am excerpting the abridged transcript below, although you are much better off listening to the whole story. First, one must remember the immigration laws before the 1965 Act:

“The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. “It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians.”

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then “nearly intolerable…” [Link]

So Kennedy and the Democrats saw the political advantages to updating the racist laws in order to give an equal shot to everyone in the world, but Kennedy died before the ’65 act was passed. When Lyndon Johnson signed it into law he went out of his way to state that he didn’t think anything would come of it. Neither Johnson, nor most of the government, thought that people would really line up to come to the United States:

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Looking back, Johnson’s statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. [Link]

Continue reading →

Pursuing the Hayats

Posted on by

I wanted to provide SM readers with a quick update on the trials of the ice cream truck driver and his son from Lodi, California. As you may remember the father’s prosecution resulted in a mistrial due to a hung jury, while the son was convicted on one charge of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI (he faces up to 39 years in prison). Last Friday the U.S. Attorney’s office said that it will have another go at the elder Hayat:

Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they will retry a Lodi man whose first trial on charges that he lied to FBI agents during a terrorism investigation ended in a mistrial last month after half the jury voted for acquittal on one of the counts.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. set June 5 as the new trial date for Pakistani American Umer Hayat, 48, on two counts that he made false statements about his son’s training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003-04 and about his own knowledge of such camps.

“In the post-9/11 environment in which we live,” said U.S. Atty. McGregor Scott, “lying to the FBI in the course of a terrorism investigation is serious misconduct. False information may result in agents losing valuable time to foil a deadly plot, or perhaps bringing the wrong person or persons under suspicion.”

After deliberating for more than a week, jurors in the first trial reported April 25 that they were hopelessly deadlocked. According to prosecutors, the jurors split 7 to 5 in favor of conviction on one count and 6 to 6 on the other. [Link]

This wasn’t about just one holdout juror. Half the jury thought that there was reasonable doubt, especially considering the fact that the father was accused of providing misleading statements in order to protect his own son AND the fact that the FBI used shady interviewing techniques. Umer Hayat’s attorney sounded confident with respect to the outcome of a second trial:

“Continuing to pursue Umer Hayat on the charge of lying will have a chilling effect on people in the community coming forward and talking to the FBI,” Griffin said. “Umer Hayat did not have to go to the FBI. He voluntarily went to the FBI to talk with them and then found he was being accused of being a terrorist. When they couldn’t prove that, they accused him of being a liar.” [Link]

As a side note, Hayat’s homecoming upon his release was bittersweet:

Hayat’s homecoming was a mixture of joy and sorrow: Moments after learning of his immediate release Monday morning, Hayat’s attorney told him that his father, who had lived with him in Lodi, died Saturday. [Link]

Continue reading →

The Hindu cows won’t be coming home

Posted on by

I was quite sad all day yesterday after I learned that the rights of a Hindu family in a small town in upstate New York had been trampled upon. It seems that in every direction that we gaze these days someone else in America is losing a fundamental right that our founding fathers believed in and bled for. In this case it is the right to bear cows for protection. The New York Times recently reported on this gripping story:

The Voiths lament on their front porch. Their cow may now be fifteen minutes away, but they still have their faith and each other.

To Stephen and Linda Voith, keeping cows at their home on Main Street in Angelica, N.Y., a tiny rural village, is a central facet of their Hindu beliefs.

To local officials, though, keeping the Voiths’ growing herd outside village limits is a matter of law, not religion.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Rochester recently agreed, upholding a lower court ruling that prevented a lawyer for the couple from raising the issue of religious freedom when the village won an injunction against them. In 2003, an acting State Supreme Court justice found the Voiths in violation of a law against keeping livestock on parcels smaller than 10 acres.

“We’re being denied our right to practice our religion, because it seems like such a threat to the status quo in this country,” Mr. Voith said, calling attention to a dairy farm across the street behind their home.

The village attorney, Raymond W. Bulson, said the law does not single out any religion and described the dispute as a quality-of-life matter.

“You move to a village because you want the amenities,” Mr. Bulson said. “If you move there to have those amenities, you don’t want a cow next door. I’m sure their religious beliefs are sincere, but that was never an issue…” [Link]

Bigots. They aren’t even ashamed. They just come out and say it. “You don’t want a cow next door.” I guess it doesn’t even matter to Mr. Bulson that the cow in question is both young and in love. This isn’t just a story about religious discrimination but also one about forbidden love. Continue reading →

Pistachio Shells at Camp Echo

Posted on by

Mahvish Khan has spent a lot of time at Guantanamo Bay lately. Born in 1978, Mahvish is the daughter of Pashtun Pakistani parents who met while in medical school in Peshawar. Mahvish is a US citizen, speaks Pashto, practices Islam, and studies law at the University of Miami.

It’s clearly been a heavy few years for the sister, and in response, she took a remarkably deep, courageous course of action. She found out which law firms were representing Guantanamo detainees, and pestered them to take her on as an assistant and interpreter. She found an interested firm and underwent a 6-month security check.

She’s now been to Guantanamo nine times. Her first-person account of visiting the detainees, published in Sunday’s Washington Post, is a beautiful, powerful piece of testimony, made all the more so by the poignancy of her cultural connection to the diminished men she found.

At 80, Haji Nusrat — detainee No. 1009 — is Guantanamo Bay’s oldest prisoner. A stroke 15 years ago left him partly paralyzed. He cannot stand up without assistance and hobbles to the bathroom behind a walker. Despite his paralysis, his swollen legs and feet are tightly cuffed and shackled to the floor. (…)
In the middle of our meeting, he says to me: ” Bachay .” My child. “Look at my white beard. They have brought me here with a white beard. I have done nothing at all. I have not said a single word against the Americans.” (…)
The old man looks at me. “You are a daughter to me,” he says. “Think of me as a father.” I nod, aligning and realigning pistachio shells on the table as I interpret.
As the meeting ends and we collect our things to go, the old man opens his arms to me and I embrace him. For several moments, he prays for me as Peter watches: “Insha’allah, God willing, you will find a home that makes you happy. Insha’allah, you will be a mother one day. . . . “

The sister is no romantic. She states her belief that the fifteen men her firm is representing are guilty of no wrong-doing, but she limits her claim to those men. She paints a subtle picture of life on the base, in which the U.S. soldiers are pleasant and welcoming. It’s a fascinating account of a place out of space and time, deliberately established and kept that way, sad, tragic and in no small measure absurd. Continue reading →

Two ATLiens indicted on terror charges

Posted on by

From our News Tab we got word that late on Thursday the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta unsealed and indictment against a Pakistani American student at Georgia Tech, as well as another Atlanta-based U.S. citizen who was arrested a few days ago in Dhaka. From CNN:

A Georgia Tech university student has been indicted for material support of terrorism, and another Atlanta-area man has been arrested in Bangladesh in connection with the case, authorities said Thursday.

Though the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta on Thursday unsealed an indictment against Syed Ahmed, 21, details remained sealed. A grand jury indicted him March 23, the same day he was arrested.

“The charge against Mr. Ahmed is serious and involves national security and will be prosecuted with that in mind,” U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said in a news release.

Ahmed is not accused of committing a terrorist act; he is charged only with providing material support, the federal prosecutor said…

On Monday, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, was arrested in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, according to his sisters. He was handed over to the FBI and put on a plane to New York on Thursday, the federal source said. [Link]

We have to remember that grand juries will usually indict anyone with a pulse. More details about the actual indictment will hopefully follow in the next several weeks and we will try to keep an eye on it. I am assuming that this will turn out to be more than just part of the “taking pictures while brown” phenomenon.

Ahmed is studying mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. He is a naturalized American citizen and the papers detailing his arrest last month on charges related to terrorism have his parents shocked and surprised….

Ahmed’s family suspects a videotape of their son made of a building, is what authorities are suspicious of. The family reportedly allowed federal agents to take computer information from their son’s room. [Link]

Continue reading →

Does this man have a case?

Posted on by

Indo-Canadian Akhil Sachdeva, an accountant originally from Delhi, is suing the U.S. government for his shabby treatment in the aftermath of 9/11. But does he have a case?

Akhil Sachdeva

Chaining him to a bench at the FBI’s Manhattan office on Dec. 20, 2001, federal agents demanded to know his religious and political beliefs, asked whether he had taken flying lessons and sought his personal views about the suicide hijackers…

… 30 or 40 armed agents barged into the uncle’s home where he was staying and took him away. At the FBI’s offices, they shackled his legs to a steel bench and interrogated him for four to five hours, never offering him a call to his family or lawyer, he said…

Sachdeva said he was later taken to the Passaic County Jail, where he was strip-searched and put in a cell with dozens of inmates… He and the other seven plaintiffs say their biggest fear came from guards who threatened them and the police dogs that were routinely paraded. “… suddenly there are eight or 10 officers holding dogs, then they took us in small corridors and pushed us against the walls, and the dogs were two inches away,” Sachdeva said. “They started barking and it was so terrifying.”‘They… pushed us against the walls, and the dogs were two inches away’

Other inmates called them terrorists, and one punched him in the face…

“One day I have everything, the next day they destroyed my life and I was not even charged for anything… I had done no crime… how can they treat people that way?” [Link]

Continue reading →

Posted in Law

No justice, no purse

Posted on by

The survivors of the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking of 1986 have just filed a $10B reparations suit against the government of Libya because of information which came out in 2004 about Libya’s role:

… the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, and it seeks $10 billion in compensatory damages, as well as unspecified punitive damages, from Libya, its long-time leader, Muammar Qadhafi, and the five convicted militants, all of whom were members of the notorious group Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO). [Link]

The Bombay-Karachi-Frankfurt-JFK flight was taken over in Karachi by a Middle Eastern terror group called Abu Nidal. Four men dressed as Pakistani security guards and bristling with arms got on board the Boeing 747. Twenty people were massacred on board:The hijackers had intended to crash the jumbo jet into Tel Aviv

Flight attendants were able to alert the cockpit crew using intercom, allowing the pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer to escape through a hatch in the cockpit, effectively grounding the aircraft…

… flight attendants surreptitiously declined to collect some of the United States passports and hid other United States passports from the hijackers… [Link]

Sometimes it’s better to be a citizen of a subcontinental country:

When [Jordanian terrorist Zayd Safarini] arrived at the seat of Rajesh Kumar, a 29-year-old California resident who had recently been naturalized as an American citizen, Safarini ordered Kumar to go to the front doorway of the aircraft and to kneel with his hands behind his head… Shortly thereafter he shot Kumar in the head and pushed him out the door onto the tarmac below… [Link]

Surviving passenger Jay Grantier, a resident of the state of Washington, said, “This was an attack on America. The terrorists murdered their first victim because he was an American, and when they ordered the cabin crew to collect all our passports, it was pretty obvious that they intended to kill more of us in the hours to come.” [Link]

Continue reading →

Sudafed-ing is not a crime

Posted on by

The ACLU just filed sworn informant testimony in the Georgia meth merchant case showing law enforcement targeted Gujarati shopkeepers because they spoke poor English, entrapped them, then selectively prosecuted based on race (thanks, technophobicgeek):

Documents filed by the A.C.L.U. yesterday include a sworn statement from an informant in the sting, saying that federal investigators sent informants only to Indian-owned stores, “because the Indians’ English wasn’t good.” The informant said investigators ignored the informant’s questions about why so many South-Asian-owned stores were visited in the sting.

Other filings said prosecutors had several tips that more than a dozen white-owned stores were selling the same ingredients, but failed to follow up on them. According to a sworn statement from a witness, law enforcement officials tipped off a white store owner about the investigation and recommended ways to avoid scrutiny…

Of 629 convenience stores in the six-county area in the sting, 80 percent are owned or operated by whites, according to the A.C.L.U.’s court filing, but fewer than 1 percent of the stores in the sting are white-owned or operated. The filing said the clerk at the only white-operated store was known widely as a methamphetamine addict whose husband was in prison for making the drug. [Link]

I think we have a new rallying cry:

“Selling Sudafed while South Asian is not a crime,” said Christina Alvarez, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. “The U.S. Constitution requires police to investigate people based on evidence, not ethnicity…”

By the time Operation Meth Merchant was completed, almost 20 percent of the South-Asian-owned stores in the area were indicted, while only 0.2 percent of stores owned by whites or other ethnic groups were similarly accused. All in all, South-Asian-owned stores were nearly 100 times more likely to be targeted…

“They only sent me to Indian storesÂ…they wanted me to say things like ‘I need it to go cookÂ’ or ‘Hurry up, IÂ’ve got to get home and finish a cookÂ’,” said an undercover informant in a sworn statement attached to the ACLUÂ’s legal papers. “The officers told me that the IndiansÂ’ English wasnÂ’t good, and they wouldnÂ’t say a lot so it was important for me to make these kinds of statements…”

“Northwest Georgia is made no safer by police targeting a particular racial group while giving a free pass to those they have good reason to believe are actually making and selling meth,” said Deepali Gokhale, organizer of the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant… [Link]

The facts aren’t all on the table yet, but from a distance it smells like Tulia all over again, and both times in the South. I can’t muster much sympathy for people who knowingly supplied tweak traffickers, selective prosecution or no. But if it turns out the cops entrapped shop clerks with poor English proficiency by using inscrutable drug jargon, it would be ethically disgusting.

What also bothers me is that all the first-gen Gujarati shopkeepers I’ve met seem socially conservative and anti-drugs at a visceral level. If I were to play ‘Name the Criminal Mastermind,’ anything drug-related would be pretty far down the list. Continue reading →

The first desi Supreme Court Justice? (updated)

Posted on by

As Dave mentioned earlier, the lawyer arguing one of the most important cases in front of the Supreme Court right now is a desi – Neal Kumar Katyal.

The future Justice Katyal?

He’s so illustrious that he has even been mentioned as a possible future (Democratic) pick for the Supreme Court:

At a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution on the Senate hearings on Judge Roberts, moderator Stuart Taylor, a columnist for the National Journal, pointedly asked panelist Katyal if a future Democratic president nominated him to the Supreme Court, which could well be, would he also be as evasive as Roberts was at the hearings?… [Link]

To give you a sense of why this is a plausible conjecture, here are just some of the highlights from his resume:

  • He clerked for both Justice Breyer and Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He also worked for now Justice Roberts the summer after he graduated from Yale Law. [Link]
  • “In 1998-99, Katyal served as National Security Adviser to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice” [Link]
  • “He … served as Vice President Al Gore’s co-counsel in the Supreme Court election dispute of 2000” [Link]
  • He “represented the Deans of most major private law schools in the University of Michigan affirmative-action case” that was settled in 2003. [Link]
  • In 2004, he was responsible for the case that “struck down the Guantanamo trial system as unconstitutional and a violation of the Geneva Conventions.” [Link]
  • In 2005, at age 34, Katyal was named one of the the leading “40 lawyers under 40” by the National Law Journal
  • He is listed as a speaker by ICM, one of the largest literary and talent agencies around. They also represent Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster.
  • Even with all the time he spends in court, he’s a Professor at Georgetown Law.
  • And yes, ladies, he’s married. That means even his Punjabi parents are happy!

Katyal is the lead lawyer in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Amrit Singh is one of the lawyers involved in Ali et. al. v. Rumsfeld, and Vanita Gupta argued the Tulia case. Looks like we’re doing alright in terms of representing in the field of civil liberties, no?

Related posts: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, The art of the book review, The “Devils” Advocates

Continue reading →

Posted in Law

When asylum might not be a good thing

Posted on by

shaluja.jpg Sri Lankans Saluja Thangaraja, who is now 26, and Ahilan Nadarajah have been sitting in a U.S. Federal pen for 4 years now. Why? They are victims in a sense of the politics that resulted from 9/11. The SJ Mercury news picks this off the AP wire:

A Sri Lankan woman fleeing persecution in her native country has been released after spending more than four years in federal detention on allegations that she entered the country illegally.

Saluja Thangaraja, 26, was freed from the Otay Mesa detention center late Monday after the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the release of a Sri Lankan man who also spent more than four years in the same facility.

The court ordered the release of Ahilan Nadarajah on March 17, saying the government was violating federal law by holding him even though he wasn’t criminally charged and couldn’t be deported in the foreseeable future.

Nadarajah and Thangaraja both fled Sri Lanka and stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border in October 2001 and were charged with being in the U.S. without a valid visa. Both were granted political asylum but the government refused to release them.

In case you are keeping score at home, this is yet another example of the Executive Branch selectively ignoring the power of the Judicial Branch in the name of “protecting” Americans. The fact that these two were stopped at the Mexican border may have incentivized the government to over-prosecute this case so as to justify their specious arguments connecting illegal immigration on the Mexican border to terrorism. Thangaraja and Nadarajah were kept in jail while the original ruling was appealed by the government. As you have probably already guessed, the U.S. government insisted these two were LTTE terrorists despite evidence to the contrary. Continue reading →

Posted in Law