U.S. Arrest of Pro-Palestinians
It seems to me that the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have a lot of explaining to do in the matter of the six Jordanians who are facing deportation because of their affiliation with the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In spite of the fact that the FBI has investigated these individuals for 10 months, the most serious charge they could come up with was a violation of the McCarthy-era McCarran-Walter Act; as a result, these students are accused of “writ(ing), publish(ing), or distribut(ing) material advocating the doctrines of world communism.” Can anyone conceive of a more blatantly trumped-up charge than this?
Are these young men and women dangerous felons requiring forcible arrest in the middle of the night and subsequent detention 150 miles from their families and lawyers? If so, why were five weeks allowed to elapse between the mid-December signing of the federal show-cause orders and their arrest?
Are they violent criminals? No. Three of them are engineering students, one is a building contractor. What is the deal here, anyway?
While I am not an advocate of those who try to achieve their political ends by targeting the civilian population, I must nevertheless strongly condemn blatant Arab-bashing of this kind by the government of the country, which supposedly leads the free world. Even those who do not find actions like these morally repugnant should be pragmatic enough to realize that they United States must practice what the high-sounding words of the Constitution preach in order to avoid a descent into total hypocrisy, and a consequent and total loss of credibility around the world.
RANDALL SMITH
La Jolla
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