Palestinian Student Won’t Be Deported

A Los Angeles immigration judge has refused to deport a Palestinian student originally accused by the government of supporting a Palestine Liberation Organization group with a history of terrorism.

The student, Bashar Amer, 28, of Glendale, was one of eight aliens--seven Palestinians and a Kenyan--arrested by immigration officials and the FBI in January, 1987, and accused of subversion under the McCarran-Walter Act.

The decision by U.S. Immigration Judge Ingrid K. Hrycenko, was the first ruling in the 3 1/2-year-old case on whether any of the eight defendants can be deported. It was written on July 10 and is now being circulated to lawyers.

The Justice Department, which alleged that the eight were a threat to national security, declined to comment on whether it would appeal.

“Given the way (Washington) has harassed these individuals since the beginning, I’d be surprised if the government doesn’t appeal, although I believe the appeal would be baseless,” said Marc Van Der Hout, a National Lawyers Guild attorney and lead counsel for the eight.

The Justice Department, in the course of the tangled legal battle in Immigration Court in Los Angeles, alleged that the eight should be deported because of their association with a PLO group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All eight denied belonging to the PFLP.

Lawyers for the Palestinians, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have accused the government of selectively prosecuting the eight for expressing their political views on controversial Middle East issues.

Deportation hearings for the two lead defendants who are still facing subversion charges, Khader Musa Hamide, 36, of Los Angeles, and Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh, 34, of Long Beach, are expected to be held this fall.

Late last year, a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional the section of the McCarran-Walter Act under which the aliens were charged. That section had allowed the government to deport aliens for their political views.

The challenge to the act prompted the government to withdraw those charges and file new ones against the other six defendants, including Amer. The new charges were based mainly on technical violations of immigration law. Amer was accused of not maintaining his student status at Chaffey Community College in the San Bernardino County community of Alta Loma.

A pharmacology major, Amer was arrested by immigration agents who removed him from a classroom while he was taking a chemistry examination. Along with the other seven, Amer was kept in maximum-security cells for almost three weeks at the federal prison at Terminal Island before being released by an immigration judge.

During six days of deportation hearings last year, a team of Justice Department lawyers argued that Amer violated the terms of his student visa and should be deported because he didn’t maintain a full course of study since he entered Chaffey in September, 1985.

To maintain a student visa, foreign students--with certain exceptions--must maintain a class load of 12 semester or quarter hours per term.

Hrycenko found that one of those exceptions occurred when a foreign student official at Chaffey advised Amer to register for fewer than 12 units in the fall of 1986, “when it became apparent that (Amer) would receive a poor grade . . . .”

Commenting on the notoriety of the case and the fact that Amer “struggled in his studies,” Hrycenko observed, “the additional pressure of being brought before the court on charges of deportability does not provide a conducive atmosphere for furthering one’s studies.”