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San Francisco Chronicle – July 8, 2004 Immigrants deserve equal protection By Lucas Guttentag Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's extravagant claims that the war on terrorism justified unprecedented and unreviewable presidential power. The court's rulings, though far from definitive, underscored once again the indispensable role of the judicial branch as protector of individual rights in the face of government excesses. In Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, the court overwhelmingly rejected indefinite military detention of an American citizen held incommunicado who had been deemed an "enemy combatant" by the president. In Rasul vs. Bush, a broad majority held that the government could not imprison noncitizens at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba without scrutiny by any court. Unfortunately, in the case of immigrants who challenge illegal detention and deportation, the denial of judicial review and the threat of incarceration without due process began long before the Sept. 11 attacks. In 1996, Congress enacted -- and the Clinton administration aggressively enforced -- so- called "court-stripping" laws that tried to deny many immigrants the right to challenge deportation orders in court. The 1996 laws also contained new detention powers that supposedly authorized indefinite incarceration of immigrants who could not be deported. Just months before Sept. 11, in two decisions presaging the recent rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the government's interpretation of the 1996 laws. In INS vs. St. Cyr (a decision the court cited in the Guantanamo case), the justices ruled 5 to 4 that immigrants are entitled to challenge a deportation order by invoking the constitutionally guaranteed "Great Writ" of habeas corpus. In Zadvydas vs. Davis, a decision relied on in the Hamdi ruling, the court held that the law did not authorize indefinite detention of immigrants and that any such statute would raise serious constitutional problems. The court's decisions underscore the essential role of an independent and assertive judiciary in our constitutional system of checks and balances…. Lucas Guttentag is director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project (www.aclu.org). http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/08/EDGG37HHMU1.DTL |