Dear Representative/Senator
As an attorney and a citizen, I am incandescent with anger at the new policy of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, announced as part of "Operation Liberty Shield," requiring requires the automatic and continued detention of all arriving asylum seekers from a list of thirty-four countries, including the recently "liberated" Iraq, which the government has classified as centers of terrorist activity. Many of these countries have well-documented records of human rights abuse that prompt people to seek asylum here, and under "Operation Liberty Shield" we will throw them in jail indefinitely simply because they fled regimes where they face a well-founded fear of persecution. This policy is in blatant defiance of last term’s Supreme Court holding Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001) (limiting an alien's post-removal-period detention to a period necessary to bring about that alien's removal from the United States), and is utter violation of civilized norms of due process and equal protection.
What can else could be said about a policy that permits (1) indefinite detention, of (2) persons not even suspected of any crime, (3) on the basis of nation origin. Attorney General Ashcroft claims that this is necessary to prevent diversion of resources from "the war on terrorism," an argument that, if accepted, would justify any excess in thew "war on terrorism," because everything, even the use of a pencil or paperclip, in some way diverts resources from the "war on terrorism." Is the administration attempting to see how many constitutional rights and constraints it can violate in a single decision – trampling on the Supreme Court, detaining persons without probable cause, detaining them indefinitely, and detaining them expressly on the basis of national origin, a category that, like race, requires a compelling interest and narrow tailoring to uphold? Is that the model of a free society we wish to show to Iraq and the rest of the world? Operation Liberty Shield indeed. Orwell would be gratified: Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Apart from the breathtaking lawlessness of this policy, it is also catastrophically stupid and ineffective. Has any asylum-seeker ever committed a terrorist act even by the broad definition of the USA Patriot Act? The policy would not have stopped the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom were asylum seekers. It would simply detain indefinitely hundreds or thousands of totally innocent men, women, and children whose only crime is that they fled oppressive governments.
As a constituent I insist that you initiate or support legislation that prohibits this policy, and makes it plainly unlawful to indefinitely detain asylum seekers, or anyone at all without probable cause, or anyone at all on the basis of national origin and for no other reason.
Sincerely.
Justin Schwartz, Esq
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