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Muslim and not an American citizen? That’s enough to detain you indefinitely.

Jill

A disturbing result in an immigration case:

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.

This is pretty scary stuff — an immigrant can be detained because of their religion, skin color, or country of origin. They can be held without access to counsel, for as long as authorities see fit, without being told why.

We should keep this in perspective, as it’s only a district court case. But it is the first time that a court has addressed the issue of discrimination in these indefinite detainments, and it’s troubling that this is its conclusion.

“This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the president,” said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the detainees. “The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race.”

As an aside, if this kind of stuff troubles you and you’d like to do something about it, consider making a contribution to the Center for Constitutional Rights. They do amazing work, and are on the front lines of cases like this. They employ some incredibly bright legal minds, who are willing to work for very little. They have far fewer resources than similar organizations (like the ACLU), and they often take on tougher and less high-profile cases.

But David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and a co-counsel in the lawsuit, said the ruling was the only one of its kind and made New York “an equal protection-free zone” because the government can detain immigrants wherever it chooses.

“What this decision says is the next time there is a terror attack, the government is free to round up every Muslim immigrant in the U.S., based solely on their ethnic and religious identity, and hold them on immigration pretexts for as long as it desires,” he said. “We saw after 9/11 what the government did in an era of uncertainty about how far it can go. Judge Gleeson has essentially given them a green light to go much further.”

Feeling nervous yet?

7 thoughts on Muslim and not an American citizen? That’s enough to detain you indefinitely.

  1. Convenient of you to overlook this little fact:

    A spokesman for the government, Charles S. Miller, would not respond to those assertions, saying only that the Justice Department was “very pleased that the court upheld the decision to detain plaintiffs, all of whom were illegal aliens, until national security investigations were completed and plaintiffs were removed from the country.”

    So, to be honest, your headline should read: “Muslim, not an American citizen, and here illegally? That’s enough to detain you indefinitely.

    I appluad the decision and look forward to its continued and increased application.

  2. Pingback: The Heretik » Blog Archive » Highly Suspicious
  3. Pingback: UrbanGrounds » Blog Archive » Illegal-immigrant Muslims Can Be Rounded Up and Held Indefinitely

  4. I don’t care if you’re an illegal immigrant. Charge the person, send him back to his country, but don’t detain the person indefinitely. Besides, all you “small-government, low-taxes” people… how are you going to pay for keeping people for no good reason? Oh that’s right. Let’s cut programs to women and the poor, let’s scrape off even more out of the educational system.

    Oh, and by the way… how is this different than… oh… internment/concentration camps?

  5. It’s irrelevant that these people were illegal aliens. The decision by the judge explicitly says that any non-citizens (like me, for example) can be held indefinitely and without explanation.

    Ah, well… I’ve had to work in fairly uncivilised parts of the world before: guess I can continue to do it in this one.

  6. “The decision by the judge explicitly says that any non-citizens (like me, for example) can be held indefinitely and without explanation.”

    I agree. I’m a permanent resident, but not a citizen. The legal status of the person doesn’t matter- they need to be charged, deported, somehing- but holding someone indefinitely is basically another form of a concentration camp.

  7. This part here i think is the key:

    But his interpretation of immigration law gave the government broad discretion to enforce the law selectively against noncitizens of a particular religion, race or national origin, and to detain them indefinitely, for any unspecified reason, after an immigration judge had ordered them removed from the country.

    “The executive is free to single out ‘nationals of a particular country’ and focus enforcement efforts on them,” the judge wrote. “This is, of course, an extraordinarily rough and overbroad sort of distinction of which, if applied to citizens, our courts would be highly suspicious.”

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