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Subject: McCarran-Walter's Last Gasp<By Nat Hentoff=
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 11:48:46 EST
Message-ID: <34.1992Nov14.114846@AmeriCast.com>

McCarran-Walter's Last Gasp<By Nat Hentoff=

 In January 1987, agents of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, accompanied by members of the FBI, arrested eight Pales-
tinian aliens and one Kenyan woman in Los Angeles. Some of the
arrests were at dawn, with guns drawn. One of those taken into
custody later that day, a student, was hauled away in the middle
of an exam. Another, Khader Hamide, who has been in the United
States since 1971, was due to get his citizenship papers the week
he was arrested.

 Shackled hand and foot, the "terrorists" - as the INS called
them - were charged with associating with an organization, the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which advocates
the "doctrines of world communism." Under the language of the
McCarran-Walter Act, which was in effect at the time, this kind
of advocacy was reason for deportation proceedings. At first, the
prisoners were denied bail as risks to national security.

 The FBI had conducted a lengthy investigation of these "terror-
ists." One FBI agent had moved into an apartment next door to
Khader Hamide and his wife, Julie Mungai, to get the subversive
goods on those two.

 The result? In testimony before the Senate Committee on Intelli-
gence in 1987, FBI DirectorWilliam Webster said: "The individuals
who were arrested in California had not been found to have en-
gaged themselves in terroristic activities." They were arrested,
Webster continued, "because they are alleged to be members of a
worldwide communist organization ... in this particular case, if
these individuals had been United States citizens, there would
not have been a basis for their arrest."

 American citizens, the director of the FBI acknowledged, have
the First Amendment right to advocate ideas, even those propagat-
ed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. (The
people arrested, it should be noted, had denied membership in the
PFLP.)

 But there was "evidence" of their link to that organization,
which has indeed committed certain acts of terrorism. The defen-
dants had in their possession not guns but magazines, including
the PFLP's Democratic Palestine. In the magazines were articles
calling for an independent Palestinian state. It is a PFLP view,
and it is also held by some Israelis as a way to keep Israel a
Jewish state. The defendants had distributed these magazines. The
publications were legal and could be found in the Library of
Congress.

Eventually, the charges of being handmaidens of world communism
were dropped against most of the defendants, who then had to deal
only with technicalities concerning their visas. But the remain-
ing two - Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh - were still on the
INS's priority list for deportation.  Meanwhile, in 1990,
Congress, at the instigation of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-
N.Y.), amended the immigration laws, removing the provisions of
the McCarran-Walter Act that forbade immigrants from advocating
world communism or other such pernicious political doctrines.
They too were to have free speech rights here. Under the new sta-
tute, deportation can take place if it is shown that immigrants
are "engaging in terrorist activity." Not engaging in spreading
ideas, but actually involved in terrorism.

 The Justice Department - the ultimate prosecutor in this case -
has not allowed the new law to lessen its determination to prove
that these two defendants are "terrorists." In making a case that
they have "engaged in terrorist activity," the Justice Department
is interpreting the new law so broadly as to remake it.  Now
underway before Immigration Judge Bruce Einhorn in Los Angeles,
this will probably be - as the defendants' co-counsel David Cole
notes - "the last McCarthy-era deportation trial solely for advo-
cacy of ideas." Even though the charges are supposedly based on
alleged actual terrorism, Hamide and Shehadeh are on trial for
what they think.

The Justice Department has declared that it can deport Hamide and
Shehadeh solely for "providing material support to a terrorist
organization, without more." That is, without any more "proof" of
their "engaging in terroristic activity."

 This interpretation of aiding terrorism can, says David Cole,
"make deportable any supporter of any group that has committed
one or more violent acts, even if the support is directed only to
the group's lawful humanitarian activities. ... The INS could
deport any immigrant who donated money for medical supplies to
the Kurdish rebels in Iraq, raised money for Nelson Mandela's
speaking tour last summer, or responded to Oliver North's pleas
to raise money for the contras."

 Attorney General William Barr can still - before he leaves his
beleaguered post - bring a spirit of justice to his department by
dropping the charges in this case and finally interring the ghost
of the McCarran-Walter Act.

11:21 11-14C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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