2 Members of L.A. 8 Granted Residency

In a stunning development, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has granted legal resident status to two Palestinian men it had tried to deport for nearly a decade on the grounds that they have ties to terrorists in their native land.

The two men are part of a group of seven Palestinians and one Kenyan dubbed the “L.A. 8” who have alleged that the Justice Department has selectively prosecuted them for lawfully exercising their 1st Amendment rights in assisting the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in humanitarian activities.

Aiad K. Barakat and Naim N. Sharif received notices in recent days that the INS had approved their applications under a 1986 immigration statute that set up a new procedure for individuals to become permanent resident aliens.

The notices gave no explanation as to why the INS had reversed field, and no federal immigration officials were immediately available for comment. Georgetown law professor David Cole, one of the lawyers for the L.A. 8, said the agency “never gives a statement of reasons when they grant an application, only when they deny one.”

However, he said the decision means that it has become clear to INS officials that there was “no lawful reason” to deny the applications that had been filed in 1987.

“The government tried to rely on secret evidence, and over the past year they’ve had to put that evidence on the table because of a ruling by [U.S. District] Judge Stephen Wilson,” Cole said. “That evidence shows that all these guys did was engage in lawful political activity.”

Sharif said he was elated at the INS decision. “For more than 10 years my legal status here has been in doubt because of my political activities,” he said. “A huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders and my family’s.”

Barakat was not available for comment.

Sharif and Barakat have been granted temporary residency. They are now eligible to apply for permanent residency because their applications have been pending so long, said Marc Van Der Hout of the National Lawyers Guild, which has provided legal assistance to the group, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“This is an extremely significant development,” Cole said. “Here are two people who for 10 years the INS has been labeling ‘terrorists,’ and the agency has now decided that they have the right to remain here permanently. By finding them admissible as resident aliens, the INS is finding, in essence, that their association with the PFLP does not render them deportable.”

Cole said he thought the Justice Department should drop its attempts to deport the six others in the group.

“There certainly is an inconsistency with the INS proceeding against the other six on the same grounds and granting residency to Sharif and Barakat,” he said. “There is nothing about their political activities that differentiates them from the other six.”

But Deputy Atty. Gen. Philip D. Bartz said that the Justice Department planned to go forward with its case against the others, including appeals now pending in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Our view is that notwithstanding whatever the legalization unit in the INS decided, our case is well founded and our appeal is continuing,” Bartz said. “The basic thrust of our position is that it is proper grounds to remove someone from the U.S. for engaging in fund-raising activities on behalf of a terrorist organization.”

He said that the decision to grant Sharif and Barakat legal residency was made by a special INS unit, created by the 1986 immigration reform law. That unit is independent of the main Justice Department, he said.

The Justice Department has lost one battle after another in the case. In a sweeping November 1995 decision, the 9th Circuit said the government had failed to show that the immigrants had a specific intent to further any illegal aims of the group, a militant wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The appeals court ruled that deportation proceedings against the group had to be halted in order to prevent “irreparable injury” to the L.A. 8’s constitutional rights of freedom of association.

Last year, Wilson ruled that attorneys for the L.A. 8 had made a prima facie case of selective prosecution by the Justice Department. And in January, Wilson rejected the arguments of Justice Department lawyers that he should dismiss the group’s civil rights lawsuit against the government based on a new 1996 immigration law.