U.S. throws out 20-year deportation case against 2 Palestinians

LOS ANGELES - An immigration board has dismissed a case against two Palestinian men accused of having terrorist ties in a deportation attempt pursued over two decades by the administrations of four U.S. presidents.

The ruling closes a Byzantine legal saga that wound its way through federal appellate courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and federal immigration boards, breaking new legal ground along the way. It ended at the Department of Homeland Security, where the dismissal order was entered Tuesday.

One of the defendants, Khader Musa Hamide, said that he will never get over the experience of being under suspicion for 20 years, but that now "I can breathe better."

Homeland Security said in a statement that "after thorough analysis and investigation, the United States Government has no information indicating that Khader Musa Hamide and Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh currently pose a threat to national security."

"It's a huge victory and certainly a relief for our clients who have lived with this cloud over them for 20 years," said attorney David Cole, representing the Center for Constitutional Rights, which fought the case along with the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Hamide, 53, a wholesaler of coffee and tea in Southern California, said his family was followed, wiretapped and subjected to extreme surveillance.

"They moved an FBI agent into the apartment next door to ours," he recalled. "All of this will affect me for the rest of my life. I'm somewhat paranoid. I can't have a conversation even in my own home without thinking someone is listening."

Hamide said he was gratified to have found a cadre of civil rights lawyers willing to fight for him and the other defendants, who originally were known as the L.A. 8. His wife was one of those arrested, but her case was dismissed earlier, as were those of five others in the group.

The L.A. 8 were arrested on suspicion of associations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The group, a radical offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has opposed peace negotiations between the PLO and Israel. The U.S. government considers it a terrorist organization.

All eight denied being members. Immigrant rights groups have called the case politically motivated.

Cole said they were originally arrested for distributing magazines and setting up charitable fundraising dinners. Hamide and Shehadeh were the only ones accused of providing material support to the Popular Front, he said, while the others were charged with visa violations. They spent 27 days in prison.

Hamide and Cole said that one of the great achievements in the long legal war was a ruling that held that immigrants are entitled to the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens. That decision, first made by a federal judge in their case in 1989, was affirmed in a landmark decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995.

The Supreme Court dealt the defendants a blow in 1999 by ruling that aliens have no right to object to being targeted for deportation because of their political affiliations.

In January, an immigration judge ruled the government had denied both men due process by keeping them in legal limbo for so many years and being unprepared to prosecute the case.

In his written opinion, Judge Bruce J. Einhorn described the proceedings as "a festering wound on the body of respondents and an embarrassment to the rule of law."

The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the case at the request of the government.

"You have to give the Bush administration credit for doing this," said Cole. "This case began under President Reagan. It continued under the first President Bush and President Clinton. A lot of people had a substantial period of time invested in the case and were unwilling to let it go away."

The dismissal ruling prevents Hamide and Shehadeh from applying for citizenship for three years. Hamide said he plans to do so when he can, but he's not sure he will ever again attempt activism.

"I would like to do humanitarian work to help the suffering Palestinians," he said. "But I have to be very careful because of the provisions of the Patriot Act. These are very scary things."