Nov. 29, 2019
"Never in 18 years has the government used Section 412 of the PATRIOT
Act, which permits indefinite detention of resident aliens on national-
security grounds. Until now.
For the 18-year lifespan of the war on terrorism, an obscure provision of the
PATRIOT Act permitting the indefinite detention of non-citizens on U.S. soil
has gone unused. But to keep a Palestinian man behind bars even after he
finished serving his sentence, the Trump administration has fired this
bureaucratic Chekhov’s gun.
Adham Amin Hassoun, now in his late 50s, has spent nearly the entire war
on terrorism in cages. First picked up on an immigration violation in June
2002, he ended up standing trial alongside once-suspected “dirty bomber”
Jose Padilla. But Hassoun was never accused of any act or plot of violence.
His crime was cutting checks to extremist-tied Muslim charities operating in
places like Kosovo and Chechnya that Congress outlawed after the 9/11
attacks. Hassoun wrote all but one of those checks before 9/11.
Sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, Hassoun should have been a free
man in 2017. Instead, he found himself in the custody of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, which locked him up in western New York. It was
there that Hassoun’s case turned extraordinary.
ICE wanted to deport Hassoun, but his statelessness as a Palestinian got in
the way. No country—not the Lebanon of his birth, not the Israel that
occupies the West Bank and Gaza—was willing to take him. Aided by
attorneys at the University of Buffalo Law School, Hassoun in January won
what should have been his freedom, on the grounds that his deportation
was unlikely.
The Trump administration instead declared him a threat to national security.
It did so at first using an also-obscure immigration regulation designed to
sidestep a 2001 Supreme Court ruling imposing a six-month detention limit.
And it was aided by a testimonial, under seal, of Hassoun’s alleged
misdeeds behind bars as related by what his attorneys describe as jailhouse
snitches who provided second- or third-hand accounts. But as the
government fought what had become a habeas corpus case for Hassoun’s
release, the Department of Homeland Security invoked, for the first time in
U.S. government history, section 412 of the PATRIOT Act.
Section 412 gives the government broad powers to detain non-citizens on
American soil whom it can’t deport but deems, on “reasonable grounds,” to
be engaged in “activity that endangers the national security of the United
States.” It makes that determination for a six-month period that it can renew
without limit. To little fanfare, the former acting secretary of Homeland
Security, Kevin McAleenan, informed Hassoun on Aug. 9 that “you will
therefore remain in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) pending your removal from the United States or
reconsideration of this decision.”
ICE Now Aided by ‘Enhanced’ Spy Powers
I SEE
Betsy Swan
Attorneys for Hassoun, who were in federal court on Friday to argue for his
freedom, are stunned at the invocation of Section 412. They noted that the
PATRIOT Act provision is written to “take [a non-citizen] into custody,” not to
retroactively designate someone already in detention as a threat.
“If the government were to prevail in its claim of extraordinary and
unprecedented executive power, the government would be free to lock up
non-citizens indefinitely based solely on executive say-so, even after they
completed serving their sentences,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the
American Civil Liberties Union.
ICE, citing the ongoing litigation, declined comment. The Department of
Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
McAleen claimed in his August invocation of the PATRIOT Act that he did so
because Hassoun “assumed a leadership role in a criminal conspiracy to
recruit fighters and provide material support to terrorist groups, and
because you pose a continuing threat to recruit, plan, participate in, and
provide material support for terrorist activity.”
Yet the federal judge in his criminal case, Marcia G. Cooke, painted a far
different picture of Hassoun during his 2008 sentencing. There was “no
evidence that these defendants personally maimed, killed or kidnapped
anyone in the United States or elsewhere,” and the government could find
“no identifiable victims” as the result of their actions, she said.
Cooke, a George W. Bush appointee, specifically rejected the life sentence
the Justice Department sought for Hassoun, noting that years of
government surveillance on him never resulted in his criminal arrest. “This
fact does not support the government’s argument that Mr. Hassoun poses
such a danger to the community that he needs to be imprisoned for the rest
of his life,” Cooke ruled.
“This is Guantanamo on domestic soil.”
— Nicole Hallett, University of Buffalo Law School
RELATED IN POLITICS
McConnell Moves to Expand Bill Barr’s Surveillance Powers
"U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the
White House in Washington D.C., U.S. on Sunday, April 19, 2020. Democratic
leaders and the White House are close to an agreement for as much as
$450 billion to top a loan program aimed at helping small businesses stay
afloat and provide funds for hospitals and coronavirus testing.
Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images"
The Coronavirus Is Making Immigrant-Haters’ Dreams Come True
"A girl looks through the US-Mexico border fence from the Mexican side to
watch the Fourth of July fireworks being shot on the other side on the San
Diego Bay, from Playas de Tijuana, Baja California state on July 4, 2019."
‘Xenophobe in Chief’: Trump Exec Order Not About COVID-19
The administration’s portrayal of Hassoun contrasts with the man Nicole
Hallett and Jonathan Manes, professors at the University of Buffalo Law
School, meet nearly every week at the ICE detention center in Batavia.
They described someone who operates as a paternal figure to other Muslim
detainees. He aids their court cases by poring over the law books in the
library. Locked up with about 30 other immigration detainees, his red
jumpsuit marking him as a security threat, Hassoun wakes early to help
prepare breakfast in the facility kitchens. Even after what has become a 17-
year ordeal in various cells, he keeps up with American pop culture, and is a
fan of the USA Network legal drama Suits.
Using Section 412 of the PATRIOT Act to prolong Hassoun’s confinement
was so unlikely that a March New York Times story referenced it only as a
tactic by government attorneys to bolster the legitimacy of the immigration
regulation. Five months later, it was a reality.
To Hallett, the shock of Hassoun’s detention even after he served his
criminal sentence, matched with the unprecedented the means the
administration is using to keep him locked up, testifies to the degradation of
the rule of law in the post-9/11 era.
“This is Guantanamo on domestic soil,” Hallett said. “The government is
trying to detain him as long as it wants, and that prison happens to be in
Batavia, New York, not at Guantanamo Bay.”
Hassoun is said to be mentally sharp. His physical health is a different
question. Twice in Batavia he has been hospitalized, his attorneys said, after
hunger strikes to protest his confinement exacerbated his diabetes and a
pre-existing heart condition.
Then comes the loneliness and the sense of injustice. His wife moved to
Lebanon with their children over a decade ago. Last year, Hassoun told
Hallett and Manes about his youngest son’s acceptance to college; the
young man was 2 years old when his father was arrested. Hassoun believes
that his prosecution was the result of his 2002 decision, while in immigration
custody, not to turn federal informant.
Unlike many immigrant detainees, Hassoun isn’t contesting deportation. His
attorneys said he would leave the country if one would take him—another
eerie parallel to Guantanamo. “Adham just wants to live peacefully
someplace,” Manes said. A sister in Florida, a U.S. citizen, could assume
custody for him under supervised release.
“He feels quite a bit of angst over [the fact that] he had served his sentence
and feels like he should be released,” Hallett said. “He’s worried about dying
in prison.”"
|
|