McCarthy-Era Law Suffers Blow in Deportation Case

Dealing the Justice Department a major setback in its efforts to deport Los Angeles-area Palestinians it claimed were national security threats, a federal judge on Friday struck down a section of the McCarran-Walter Act under which the aliens were charged with subversion.

It was the second time that U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson has ruled that certain provisions of the McCarthy-Era act, which allows the government to deport aliens for their political views, were unconstitutional.

“It’s one more step closer to stopping the deportation hearings,” said Paul Hoffman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Los Angeles office.

Michael P. Lindemann, a Justice Department attorney, declined to comment on the ruling.

Two months ago, Wilson said he did not want to rule on this issue because the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering a government appeal of his earlier McCarran-Walter ruling. But on Friday he changed his mind.

Government efforts to deport seven Palestinians and a Kenyan, which has drawn national attention because of discrimination charges by Americans of Arab descent, began almost three years ago. In January, 1987, the eight were arrested by immigration officials and the FBI and jailed for about two weeks on subversion charges.

Since then, the case has taken several turns and is being heatedly litigated in a number of federal and immigration courtrooms.

All eight, at the outset of the government’s deportation efforts, were accused of belonging to, or supporting, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an affiliate of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PFLP has a history of terrorist activities.

The eight have denied any association with the PFLP. None has been charged with any criminal violation.

Only two of the eight defendants are still charged with subversion--Khader Hamide, 35, of Los Angeles, and Michel Shehadeh, 33, of Long Beach. Their cases have yet to be tried in immigration court.

Subversion accusations against the other six aliens were dropped by the government, which instead charged them with a variety of visa violations in a continuing effort to deport them. Their attorneys have contended, however, that they too could be recharged with subversion. Three of the six appear to have made successful cases before an immigration judge and remain in the United States. Immigration hearings are pending for the other three.

In what civil rights lawyers hailed as a landmark decision, Wilson ruled last December that alien residents have the same broad free speech rights as citizens. In that ruling, Wilson struck down as unconstitutional provisions of the 37-year-old McCarran-Walter law that declared that the aliens could be deported for advocating “the unlawful damage, injury or destruction of property.”

Then, last July, government lawyers recharged Hamide and Shehadeh under another section of McCarran-Walter that Wilson had not ruled on. That section made aliens deportable for “membership in, or affiliation with, an organization that advocates or teaches the duty or necessity or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of government officials.”

On Friday, Wilson declared that there was “little difference, if any” in the new charges, which he said were also “unconstitutionally broad.”

Also on Friday, Wilson said that lawyers for the Palestinians could proceed to gather evidence supporting their allegation that the nation’s top immigration court appellate official, David Milhollan, had a conflict of interest when he participated three years ago on a secret government panel that shaped plans to apprehend and deport alien terrorists.