Judge Bars Deportation of 2 Palestinian Activists

In another setback for the Justice Department, a Los Angeles federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday prohibiting the government from deporting two Palestinian activists.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said lawyers for Michael I. Shehade and Khader M. Hamide had produced sufficient initial evidence that the government selectively enforced immigration laws against them.

The ruling was the latest in a prolonged case that has pitted fears of terrorism against constitutional protections. Since 1987, the Justice Department has sought to expel the two men as well as five other Palestinian men and a Kenyan woman, citing their alleged ties to Palestinian terrorists.

In issuing the injunction Monday, Wilson also rejected the Justice Department’s motion to dissolve an earlier preliminary injunction that prohibited the deportation of the other six members of the group, known as the “L.A. 8.�

The government “has failed to show that any of the plaintiffs had the specific intent to further the unlawful aims� of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Wilson wrote.

The judge said William Webster, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had admitted as much in 1987 hearings. And he said that 10,000 pages of material submitted by the government confirmed that the plaintiffs had done nothing illegal.

Monday’s decision was the latest in a series that Wilson has made since the high-profile case now known as American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee vs. Janet Reno began. In a detailed and stinging ruling, the judge was extremely critical of the Justice Department’s tactics and legal work.

He said the government made recurring “conclusory assertions without any supporting evidence.�

When the case started, the government contended that the plaintiffs, as aliens, did not have the same 1st Amendment associational rights as citizens. It argued that their association with the PFLP made them deportable even though citizens could not be arrested for the same conduct.

But both Wilson and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, ruling that resident aliens have the same 1st Amendment rights as citizens.

The judge relied on a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision that states that to prove that the plaintiffs had engaged in unprotected conduct, they would have had to knowingly affiliate with an organization that engages in some unlawful activities and had the “specific intent to further those illegal aims.� The government had no such evidence, he said.

The judge said that when he questioned Justice Department lawyer Michael Lindemann about this point at an April 8 hearing, Lindemann responded with what Wilson called a “quite disturbing� contention “that when the government has a compelling interest, it ‘can do pretty much what it wants to do.’ �

Marck Van Der Hout, a San Francisco immigration attorney handling the case for the National Lawyers Guild, praised Wilson’s ruling. He said it was “extremely important in view of the latest anti-terrorism bill enacted by Congress,� which he said “attempts to bar people from engaging in lawful activities on behalf of organizations like the PFLP. Our Constitution protects that kind of activity.�

At several points in his ruling, Wilson stressed that the government’s own evidence shows that the PFLP engages in lawful activities, among them sponsoring games, cultural events and political demonstrations. None of the government’s arguments challenged that finding, he said.

Wilson criticized the government for trying to bolster its case by submitting dozens of issues of “Al-Hadaf,� the PFLP’s official newspaper, none of which mention any of the plaintiffs. The government also submitted “extensive hearsay compilations of the acts of terrorism linked to the PFLP over the years, in none of which is any of the plaintiffs� implicated in any way, Wilson added.

Wilson chided Justice Department lawyers for contending that the decision to deport the plaintiffs was made by an Immigration and Naturalization Service attorney in Los Angeles and that no other INS offices or other federal agencies were involved in the decision.

“Abundant evidence shows that higher-up national and regional INS officials, as well as representatives of the FBI, were involved in the decision-making processes,� Wilson wrote.