Lockdown: Amnesty International Targets INS for Treatment of 9/11 Detainees (In These Times)

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/11/news1.shtml

March 29, 2002

Lockdown
Amnesty International targets INS for treatment of 9/11 detainees
by Abby Scher

Protesters at a federal detention center in New York in March.

NEW YORK—The Immigration and Naturalization Service is detaining people on routine visa violations and holding them for weeks or months until the Federal Bureau of Investigation “clears” them, an unusual process “shrouded in secrecy,” according to Amnesty International.

In November, the INS admitted to detaining 1,200 people. The exact number now in custody is not known, however, because many additional immigrants have been rounded up and released since then.

On March 23, members from at least 30 unions rallied in front of a federal detention center where an estimated 40 Pakistani and other Muslim immigrants swept up after September 11 are being held. They joined the 150 or so regulars who’ve been protesting the secrecy, unlimited detentions and violation of the due process rights of foreign detainees every Saturday since January 26.

Michael Letwin, president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, led the labor contingent. He told the crowd of several hundred: “Today there is literally a wave of terror against Middle Easterners and South Asians. There are at least 300 who remain in custody. These kinds of acts that so clearly violate the Constitution are anathema to us.”

The demonstration was held one week after an Amnesty International report singled out the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for violating basic rights under international law in its treatment of September 11 detainees.

Amnesty documented “a disturbing level of secrecy” by the federal agencies detaining people at the MDC and other centers nationwide. Nonetheless, by interviewing 30 lawyers, groups working with the detainees and those released, and detainees’ relatives, Amnesty was able to piece together evidence the U.S. government is ignoring constitutionally protected rights to due process, access to lawyers and prompt filing of charges.

Amnesty also expressed grave concern at the flouting of the rule of law. “Scores of people were held for more than 48 hours,” the report says, “and several for more than 50 days, before being charged with a violation.” One Saudi Arabian man was held for 119 days before being charged.

The Amnesty report points out that rule changes by the INS—and not last November’s USA Patriot Act—are responsible for the treatment of some detainees. The Justice Department told immigration judges in September to restrict information and close hearings in “special cases,” including “confirming or denying whether such a case is on the docket.”

A new INS regulation also allows the service to override immigration judges’ decision to grant bail, a practice that “undermines the principle of the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary,” according to Amnesty.

Amnesty found troubling cases of detainment in 26 states, though most detainees are in New York and New Jersey. Among its findings: MDC staff told the wife of a detainee her husband was not there, even though she had received letters from him postmarked from the facility; staff illegally barred her from visiting him; more than 40 detainees may be confined to cells for 23 hours a day; and 19 MDC detainees did not have lawyers as of late 2001, leading one man to go on a hunger strike.

The Amnesty report also found numerous instances since September in which the government has not informed families and lawyers of where detainees are imprisoned or when they are moved. Detainees have been prevented from posting bail, held even after bail is posted, and denied the right to counsel. Others were “obstructed in their ability to make phone calls.” As it is, MDC detainees are allowed only one phone call per week: If there is no answer at the law office, they must wait another week to try again.

Most of the detainees the government has admitted to rounding up are Pakistani (207), followed by Egyptians (74), Turks (46) and Yemenis (38). However, the INS has created a category of “inactive” detainees about which it refuses to release information. While Amnesty gained limited access to the New Jersey county jails, the MDC in Brooklyn refused to allow investigators entry.

Racial profiling of the sort seen since September violates international law, the report charges. “There is also concern that statements made by the government purporting to link routine immigration cases with potential terrorism may fuel anti-immigrant sentiments and contribute to a wider backlash,” it says.

Imtiaz Rahi has been coming to the demonstrations every week with a small contingent from the Pakistani American Society of Long Island. He was happy to see the number of allies growing because, in his community, “People are scared. They want to come out, but they’re scared.”

Labor Against War organizes protests in SF and NYC: Solidarity with detainees! (Socialist Worker)

http://www.socialistworker.org/2002-1/400/400_11_LaborAgainstWar.shtml

Labor Against War organizes protests in SF and NYC
Solidarity with detainees!
March 29, 2002 | Page 11

HUNDREDS OF trade unionists and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City rallied March 23 to defend immigrant rights and fight back against the Bush administration’s recent tide of attacks on working people at home and abroad. KEVIN CHOJCZAK writes from San Francisco, and WADE SAVITT reports from New York.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

San Francisco

MORE THAN 200 activists and Bay Area union members marched through downtown San Francisco to the port of Oakland, Calif., chanting “Ashcroft and the CIA, taking workers’ rights away!” and “Money for jobs, health care, and schools, not for war!”

Organized by the coalition Labor Committee for Peace and Justice, the demonstration was called in defense of airport screeners, port workers, and service industry workers–whose jobs and rights have been under attack since September 11.

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, facing tighter regulations and a barrage of background checks by their Oakland employers, protested against restrictive labor policies cloaked in the language of “security.”

“We went through a long struggle to get a union hall in 1934 so we could determine the terms under which we worked. Today we are faced with double jeopardy as they are imposing these background checks on us…Well, I say, the hell with background checks!” Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Clarence Thomas told the crowd.

Other endorsing labor groups included the San Francisco Labor Council Executive Committee, SEIU Locals 718 and 1877, HERE Local 2850 and Plumbers Local 393. Antiwar, progressive and socialist groups also supported the effort.

Japanese union leader Kenichiro Hiraga led a delegation of six Japanese trade unionists on the protest–and shared experiences with the crowd about organizing against the Japanese government’s participation in Bush’s “war on terrorism.” “Since 9/11 in Tokyo, we have organized demonstrations against the war of 1,000 to 2,000 people…Being here gives us a chance to build solidarity with you in the U.S.,” he told the crowd.

Erlinda Valencia, a member of SEIU Local 790 and a baggage screener at the San Francisco International Airport, spoke out against the new law that requires all airport baggage screeners to be U.S. citizens by November 19. If the law goes into effect, hundreds of Filipino baggage screeners who work at the San Francisco airport will be fired from their jobs.

Valencia is part of the Immigrant Airport Workers Solidarity Committee, which is organizing support for the screeners in the Bay Area.

When asked how working people can fight back against these vicious attacks, Vincent Morris, of ILWU Local 10, told Socialist Worker, “It’s going to take numbers. They are not going to listen to one, or a few…This war and what happened on 9/11 is perfect for Bush since he stole the election. It just came at a perfect time when they could have started to investigate this.”

New York

ABOUT 350 protesters marched in New York City against the continued detention of approximately 50 immigrants who are currently being detained–indefinitely–at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Outside the detention center, activists chanted “Ashcroft, set them free. This is not democracy!” hoping to be heard by prisoners inside.

Organized by New York City Labor Against War (NYCLAW) coalition, demonstrators from more than 20 different unions sent a message to the city that the fight for labor rights and immigrant rights are one.

Unions represented on the demonstration included AFSCME DC 37, Locals 1407 and 2627, AFSCME DC 1707, SEIU/New York State Council, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, N.Y. Taxi Workers Alliance, Legal Aid Society Chapter, 1199/SEIU, Mail Handlers Union Local 300, CWA Local 1180 and many more.

“Every day on the workshop floor we defend due process for our workers; it’s only right that we come and defend due process here,” Larry Adams of the Mailhandler’s union told the crowd.

Michael Letwin, co-chair of NYCLAW and president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325, called the demonstration “a small but significant step up, an important symbolic gesture,” and deplored fears that unions will be branded “unpatriotic” if they dare to disagree with the government.

“Where is the might of the unions?” demanded Brenda Stokely, president of AFSCME District Council 1707. “We are the best-organized institution in the country, and we need to get behind this cause and drive it forward.”

NYCLAW has helped to organize weekly protests outside the detention center as part of the Justice for Detainees coalition. The coalition also demands disclosure of the detainees’ names and charges against them, access to the detention center for Amnesty International, and an end to the racial profiling of Middle Eastern and Muslim immigrants.

They are promising to renew their efforts in the face of a recent, renewed wave of arrests and raids and to continue until all detainees are freed.

Protests are held every Saturday at noon outside the Brooklyn Detention Center, 29th Street and Third Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Call 718-826-4833 for information.

NYCLAW Article for NLG

NYCLAW Article for NLG
March 28, 2002
by Michael Letwin
President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325[1]
Co-Convener, NYC Labor Against the War

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) was begun in first days after September 11 by a small, interracial group of elected local union officers and rank-and-file union members. Its dual purpose has been to serve as an antiwar pole within labor, and as a labor pole within the antiwar movement.

NYCLAW was founded on the premise that, much as Vietnam Veterans Against the War had a particular credibility and obligation in the 1960s and ‘70s, trade unionists who have directly witnessed and suffered from September 11 have a special role to play in dissenting from enthusiastic support for Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” voiced by most of U.S. labor officialdom.

On September 27, therefore, NYCLAW issued a written statement arguing that workers in the United States should oppose the war-both abroad and at home.[2] Unlike either the pacifism or generalized anti-imperialism which characterizes many antiwar statements, NYCLAW is a conscious attempt to outline, without lapsing into left sloganeering, why the war undermines with the collective interest of workers in New York and beyond.

Within days, the statement had been signed by scores of New York metro area trade unionists, including a small, but significant number of elected union officers.[3] All but one of these officers speak in an individual capacity; AFSCME DC 1707, which represents some 25,000 workers at non-profits with city contracts, is the only union body in New York City to have officially endorsed NYCLAW. Since that time, the statement has been endorsed by more than 500 New York City union officers and members, and by an additional 350 trade union bodies, officers and individual members from other cities and countries.

NYCLAW participants are, by any standard, few in number, and the organization has been virtually ignored by the mass media. Yet, in voicing a labor antiwar position from the moral high-ground of “Ground-Zero,” the group has faced surprisingly little hostility from workers or official labor. Thus, Brian McLaughlin, head of the New York City Central Labor Council-which is affiliated with the pro-war AFL-CIO-responded that NYCLAW signers were “entitled to express their own views.”[4]

With similar tolerance, the International UAW’s magazine reported that “[d]espite his proximity to the [September 11] attack, [a UAW local president active in NYCLAW] is opposed to a military response or an ethnic response, or to have the disaster turned into a pretext for an assault on civil rights.”[5] Shortly thereafter, the UAW summarily rejected a demand for removal of this local president for his antiwar activity.
Meanwhile, NYCLAW has played a modest, but important role.

NYCLAW’s statement has been widely circulated via hard-copy and the internet, and has been spontaneously translated into Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Turkish, and other languages, and the organization operates a listserv with 1100 subscribers. It is affiliated with, and one of the most active components of, the New York Coalition for Peace and Justice, which sponsored a 10,000-strong protest on October 7 in New York City-the largest post-9/11 antiwar demonstration in the U.S. to date. NYCLAW representatives have spoken at numerous events, including the 100,000-strong London antiwar demonstration on November 18,[6] and at the 25,000-strong February 2 Counter-WEF protest in New York City.

NYCLAW has helped convene an informal national labor antiwar network that includes the Labor Committees for Peace and Justice in the San Francisco Bay Area, D.C. and Albany. It held a December 12 labor forum on civil liberties and immigrant rights attended by about 100 people, and was largely responsible for organizing a March 23 Day of NYC Labor Solidarity with Immigrant Detainees in Brooklyn endorsed by some ten labor bodies[7] and attended by nearly 400 people. [8] NYCLAW is one of four host organizations for national antiwar protests in D.C. on April 20.[9]

These efforts reflect a high level of dedication, cooperation and principled behavior on the part of some fifty of NYCLAW’s most active participants, both independents and members of various left organizations, who have united to express working class antiwar voice.

To subscribe to the NYCLAW listserv, send an e-mail to: ,or visit .

Notes

1. NYCLAW’s other three co-conveners are: Larry Adams, President, Mail Handlers Union, L.300; Ray Laforest, Staff Representative, AFSCME DC 1707; and Brenda Stokely, President, AFSCME L.215, DC 1707. Union positions for Letwin and Adams given for identification only; no organizational endorsement implied.

2. The full text of NYCLAW’s statement is available at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/files/.

3. To date, these have come to include:  Larry Adams, Pres., National Postal Mail Handlers Union L.300; Barbara Bowen, Pres., Professional Staff Congress-CUNY/AFT L.2334; Arthur Cheliotes, Pres., CWA L.1180; Glenn Huff Jr., Pres., AFSCME L.205, DC 1707; Uma Kutwal, Fmr. Pres., AFSCME L.375, DC 37; Michael Letwin, Pres., Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW L.2325; Jill Levy, Pres., Council of Supervisors & Administrators, NYSFSA, AFSA L.1; Kim V. Medina, Pres., AFSCME L.253; Pres., DC 1707; Victoria Mitchell, Pres., AFSCME L.107; VP, DC 1707.; Maida Rosenstein, Pres., UAW L.2110; Viji Sargis, Pres., AFT L.6025, Montclair State U.; Joel Schwartz, Pres., AFSCME, Civil Service Employees Assn. L.446; Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN, Chair., State Del. Assembly, NY State Nurses Assn.; Brenda Stokely, Pres., AFSCME L.215, DC 1707; and Jonathan Tasini, Pres., Natl. Writers Union/UAW L.1981.

4. Deidre McFadyen, Some Union Heads Oppose ‘Bush War,’ Chief-Leader, Oct. 26, 2001, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/246.

5. Ashes Fell as UAW Members Fled from the Carnage, Solidarity, Nov. 2001, at http://uaw.org/solidarity/01/1101/feature01.html.

6. Extensive coverage of NYCLAW’s participation at the London protest can be viewed at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/383.

7. The full list of over 100 endorsers of this event can be viewed at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/709.

8. Christopher Lawton, Giving Detainees a Voice, B’klyn protests continue, joined by labor unions, Newsday, March 24, 2002, at http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny nyprot0324.story; and Albor Ruiz,  New Outcry Over Jailed Immigrants , N.Y. Daily News, at http://www.nydailynews.com/2002 03 25/News_and_Views/City_Beat/a 145443.asp; photos are available at:  http://dianelent.com/news/news.html and http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/.
ALAA/UAW 2325’s statement concerning defense of civil liberties following September 11  is available at: <http://www.topica.com/lists/LegalAidAttorneysBulletin/read/message.html?mid=903587941&sort=d&start=25&gt;.
The Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice organized a simultaneous labor antiwar demonstration.  Josh Richman, Unions fight for post 9/11 respectability, 200 workers rally in Oakland over threats to ‘civil rights,’ Oakland Tribune, at http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1002,1726%257E483919,00.html.

9. Information about the April 20 protests is available at: http://unitedwemarch.org/.

NYCLAW’s Work Since 9/11

NYCLAW’s Work Since 9/11
by Michael Letwin
President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325*
Co-Convener, NYC Labor Against the War
March 28, 2002

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) was begun in first days after September 11 by a small, interracial group of elected local union officers and rank-and-file union members.  Its dual purpose has been to serve as an antiwar pole within labor, and as a labor pole within the antiwar movement.

NYCLAW was founded on the premise that, much as Vietnam Veterans Against the War had a particular credibility and obligation in the 1960s and ’70s, trade unionists who have directly witnessed and suffered from September 11 have a special role to play in dissenting from enthusiastic support for Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” voiced by most of  U.S. labor officialdom.

On September 27, therefore, NYCLAW issued a written statement arguing that workers in the United States should oppose the war-both abroad and at home.

Unlike either the pacifism or generalized anti-imperialism which characterizes many antiwar statements, NYCLAW is a conscious attempt to outline, without lapsing into left sloganeering, why the war undermines with the collective interest of workers in New York and beyond.

Within days, the statement had been signed by scores of New York metro area trade unionists, including a small, but significant number of elected union officers.   All but one of these officers speak in an individual capacity.  The exceptions are officers of AFSCME DC 1707, which represents some 25,000 workers at non-profits with city contracts, and which is the only union body in New York City to have officially endorsed NYCLAW.

In the subsequent year, NYCLAW’s statement has been endorsed by some 1,200 trade unionists and labor bodies, from New York City and across the globe.

NYCLAW participants are, by any standard, few in number, and the organization has been virtually ignored by the mass media.

Yet, by voicing a labor antiwar position from the moral high-ground of “Ground-Zero,” the group has faced surprisingly little hostility from workers or even labor officials.  Just a month after 9/11, for example, the New York City Central Labor Council president told the press that NYCLAW signers were “entitled to express their own views.”

Similarly, in November, the International UAW’s magazine reported that “[d]despite his proximity to the [September 11] attack, [a UAW local president active in NYCLAW] is opposed to a military response or an ethnic response, or to have the disaster turned into a pretext for an assault on civil rights.”   Shortly thereafter, the UAW summarily rejected a demand for removal of this local president for his antiwar activity.

In the subsequent year, NYCLAW and its members have continued to play a modest, but important role, as reflected its:

•Wide circulation of the NYCLAW statement via hard-copy and the internet, including spontaneous translation into Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Turkish, and other languages;

•Listserv of 1,200-subscribers;

•Role in helping to create an informal labor antiwar network of labor antiwar committees in the San Francisco Bay Area, D.C., Albany, Detroit, Toronto and elsewhere;

•Affiliation with the New York Coalition for Peace and Justice, which sponsored a 10,000-strong protest on October 7 in New York City.

•December 12 labor forum on civil liberties and immigrant rights attended by about 100 people;

•Days of NYC Labor Solidarity with Immigrant Detainees in Brooklyn, in March and September 2002, endorsed by some sixteen labor bodies and attended by nearly 400 people.

•May 21 protest against trade union investments in State of Israel bonds.

More broadly, NYCLAW representatives have spoken at numerous antiwar events, including the 100,000-strong London antiwar demonstration on November 18, and at the 25,000-strong February 2 Counter-WEF protest in New York City.

In an effort to unite broad antiwar forces nationally, NYCLAW was one of four host organizations for national antiwar protests in D.C. on April 20, and is an initiating endorser of the upcoming national “Stop the War on Iraq” demonstration on October 26. [http://www.internationalanswer.org/pdf/o2602flyer.pdf ]

On October 19, NYCLAW will hold its first one-day organizing conference, which will be attended by trade unionists from NYC and beyond.

NYCLAW’s modest work at Ground Zero demonstrates the great need and potential for a labor antiwar voice even–and perhaps because of–the trauma of 9/11 and subsequent events.  The Bush administration’s impending war on Iraq is likely to generate a much broader level of working class antiwar sentiment.

NYCLAW’s statement and signatories thereto are available on-line at:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/files/ . To endorse, write to
laboragainstwar@yahoogroups.com or NYCLAW, PO Box 233, Prince Street Station, New York,
NY 10012.
To subscribe to the NYCLAW listserv, send an e-mail to:
<LaborAgainstWar?subscribe@yahoogroups.com>,or visit
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/&gt;.

*Affiliation for identification only and does not imply organizational endorsement.

New Outcry Over Jailed Immigrants (N.Y. Daily News)

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/ny_local/2002/03/25/2002-03-25_new_outcry_over_jailed_immig.html

NEW OUTCRY OVER JAILED IMMIGRANTS

BY ALBOR RUIZ
Monday, March 25th 2002, 1:71AM

‘Set them free!”

That was the chant 300 protesters intoned as they approached Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where at least 40 Arab and South Asian immigrants have remained imprisoned since shortly after Sept. 11.

Hundreds more around the country are in a similar situation. Yet, six months after the World Trade Center attacks, none of them have been charged with any role in the tragedy, and the government has revealed little information about who they are, their whereabouts or what will happen to them.

Saturday’s unusually cold and windy weather did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the demonstrators – a coalition of trade unionists, immigrant organizations and civil rights groups – who marched from Ninth St. and Fifth Ave. in Park Slope, to the federal detention center at 29th St. and Third Ave. in Sunset Park.

There, carrying signs that read, “Tell us their names,” they held a spirited rally.

“There can be no justice for any of us if there is no justice for all of us,” said Michael Letwin, president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW 2325, and one of the rally organizers. “This is an assault on civil liberties and democratic rights that brings to mind other shameful episodes such as the Japanese-American internment in the 1940s.”

Even though protests have been held each Saturday at noon outside the prison since Jan. 26, this one, billed NYC Labor Solidarity With Immigrant Detainees, was the biggest to date.

“This is the first time the largely immigrant New York City labor movement has really gotten involved in supporting the Arab and South Asian immigrants imprisoned since the post-Sept. 11 crackdown on civil liberties,” said Livia Gershon, a member of Local 32B-32J.

In the first two months after the twin towers disaster, the government detained 1,200 immigrants, most of them of Arab, South Asian and Muslim background.

“This has taken racial profiling to a whole new level,” said Rabbi Michael Feinberg of the Greater NY Labor-Religion Coalition, which co-sponsored the rally. “The Bill of Rights is under attack.”

Under investigation

On March 14, Amnesty International made public the results of an investigation revealing that hundreds of people are still deprived of their freedom. The human rights group found out that the Immigration and Naturalization Service is detaining people on routine visa violations and holding them for weeks or months until the FBI “clears” them. The INS refuses to provide the names and locations of most of the detainees.

According to the Amnesty International report, the detainees are deprived of basic rights guaranteed under national and international law. These include the right to humane treatment, to be informed of the reasons for the detention, to challenge the lawfulness of the detention, to have prompt access to a lawyer and to be presumed innocent.

The Metropolitan Detention Center does not fare well in the report. In one clear example of civil rights violation, Amnesty International says that center staff told the wife of a detainee that her husband was not there, even though she had received letters from him postmarked from the facility. They also illegally barred her from visiting him.

Besides, the detainees are confined to cells 23 hours a day in cruel conditions, and 19 of the 30 people detained there did not have a lawyer as of late 2001, it is reported.

Traditionally, civil liberties and democratic rights become vulnerable in times of crisis, precisely when they are more essential than ever.

“That’s why I’m here today,” said Paul Frank, a member of Civil Service Employees Association Local 1000. “If something is not done now, what’s happening to these guys today can happen to all of us.”

E-mail: aruiz@edit.nydailynews.com