U.S. Loses Round in Bid to Deport 2

Two Jordanian men whom the federal government has been attempting to deport for nearly 15 years because of their alleged ties to Palestinian terrorists have won a major legal victory in Los Angeles, increasing the prospects that they will be able to stay in the United States.

In a June 21 ruling made public Tuesday, U.S. Immigration Judge Bruce J. Einhorn held that the Justice Department cannot bring deportation proceedings against Khader Hamide and Michel Shehade for alleged terrorist ties.

Einhorn agreed with the contention of lawyers for the two men that a 1990 anti-terrorism law cannot be applied retroactively against Hamide, 46, of Chino Hills and Shehade, 44, of Garden Grove, because both were already facing deportation under a 1950s-era law targeting Communists.

The two men, both longtime legal residents, are part of a group dubbed “the L.A. 8” after the government launched attempts to deport them in 1987. All eight have denied membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization that has taken credit for several airline hijackings and car bombings in the Middle East.

Each of the L.A. 8 say they have assisted Palestinians with legitimate human rights and medical needs, raising money for hospitals and youth clubs and day-care centers.

Attorney Marc Van Der Hout, who has represented the group for years, said he hopes that Einhorn’s ruling will prompt the Bush administration “to take a fresh look at this case and drop it. This is a tremendously significant decision and hopefully it will put an end to this outrageous prosecution of our clients, who have done nothing other than engage in protected 1st Amendment activity.”

Neither the Justice Department nor the Immigration and Naturalization Service had any immediate comment.

Prosecutors have never filed criminal charges against any of the eight. They were freed weeks after being arrested in January 1987 and all remain in Southern California. During the lengthy battle, three of the eight won permanent resident status and no longer face any charges; the other three now face what their lawyers call only “minor charges,” such as overstaying a student visa.

Einhorn reversed a ruling of another immigration judge, William R. Robie, issued nearly a decade ago. Einhorn ruled that Robie, who is now deceased, overstepped his bounds when he attempted to choose between three sets of separately filed charges by the INS under “very different statutory schemes.”

Chief Judge Robie’s determination that the 1991 charges filed by the INS superseded earlier charges “was no mere effort at judicial housekeeping,” Einhorn wrote. Rather, Robie had usurped the role of a prosecutor, Einhorn added.

If he permitted the case to go forward in the fashion the government requested, it would violate the will of Congress, Einhorn stressed.

Einhorn said that it was appropriate to revisit Judge Robie’s earlier decision to permit the case to go forward because there has been a bevy of federal court rulings in the case in the past decade.

The immigrants won a number of key rulings along the way. The Constitution does not permit “guilt by association,” the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1998. That court said that the deportation could not go forward unless the government could show that the eight intended to support the “illegal group goals” of the PFLP.

However, in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that the Hamide and Shehade, along with other immigrants facing deportation, have no right to challenge their removal on selective prosecution grounds, reversing earlier rulings by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson and the 9th Circuit.

That sent the case back to the Immigration Court in Los Angeles.

Einhorn gave the Justice Department lawyers until Aug. 5 to tell him whether they plan to proceed with charges filed against Hamide, who runs a coffee business, and Shehade, West Coast director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, under the McCarran-Walter Act. Enacted during the McCarthy era, the law permitted deportation of any immigrant who advocates Communist doctrines.

Einhorn’s ruling puts the Justice Department in a difficult position because Judge Wilson already has ruled that law unconstitutional. A federal appeals court reversed that ruling, but only on technical grounds, saying the immigrants were not far enough along in their deportation proceedings to raise the issue.

Van Der Hout said that if the government decided to move ahead, “we will defend the case on a factual basis and will challenge its constitutionality on 1st Amendment grounds of freedom of association.” He added, “the only way the INS can proceed against Hamide and Shehade is under a statute a federal district court judge already has declared unconstitutional.”