L.A. 8 Victory After Twenty Years

Dan Kowalski (here) at Bender’s Immigration Bulletin repoorts that “[a] federal immigration judge has dismissed the government’s attempt to deport two men who were arrested along with six other U.S. residents because of their alleged ties to Palestinian terrorists and who fought relentless efforts to force them to leave the country for 20 years.” Judge Bruce E. Einhorn of Los Angeles, in a ruling made public Tuesday, said the government had violated the constitutional rights of Khader M. Hamide and Michel I. Shehadeh by its “gross failure” to comply with his instructions to produce “potentially exculpatory and other relevant information.” In a scathing decision, Einhorn said the government’s conduct in the case was “an embarrassment to the rule of law” that left “a festering wound on” Hamide and Shehadeh, who have been in legal and personal limbo for two decades.”   For the L.A. Times report, click here.  For the press release from the L.A. 8 Attorneys, click here.

As mentioned above, this case has been percolating in the agency and the courts for two decades.  It has been the subject of numerous immigration court, BIA, federal district court, court of appeals, and one Supreme Court decision.

David Cole has an interesting piece in The Nation (here) a few years ago on the LA 8 case.

KJ