ACLU Position in Polovchak Case

Would such a brouhaha be raised about Walter Polovchak if his family had come from Sweden? Or Belgium? Or the Netherlands? What position would the INS have taken if they wanted to return to Guatemala or Chile and Walter did not want to return to life not under a communist dictatorship but a fascist dictatorship?

Suppose the Polovchaks had been Salvadorans? Would the INS have treated young Walter as it treats Salvadoran refugees who seek refuge here because their lives are in danger in El Salvador?

Or, suppose the Polovchaks had been U.S. citizens who wanted to move from New Jersey to Connecticut? Would Walter’s rights as a child have been defended so zealously by Dershowitz, because he did not want to leave his Jersey friends or school?

The ACLU aside, when does Dershowitz take Mother and Father Polovchak into consideration? It’s bad enough when an Administration supposedly dedicated to “the family” practices its ideological paranoia to tear a family apart, but Alan Dershowitz?

What of the Polovchaks who conceived the child (possibly, out of love, Mr. Dershowitz?), gave birth to him, nurtured him and cared for him, brought him up and provided for him as best they could? (Possibly, because they loved him, Mr. Dershowitz?) Are they not worth some consideration? Or doesn’t Alan Dershowitz’s surprising Cold War turn of mind allow him to admit that possibly, just possibly, citizens of the Soviet Union, like the citizens of other countries, are also human beings who have feelings and emotions?

SOL STEMBER

Van Nuys