ICE Deporting US Citizens, The Rest, Pt. II

UPDATE: Yesterday ICE appealed, yet again, a judge's order to terminate the removal proceedings against Neil Rambana's client, a US citizen. Despite the fact that immigration judge William Cassidy issued orders in 2006 and 2008 terminating David's deportation, David remains incarcerated. For more, see "US Citizen Falsely Imprisoned by ICE" (Georgia).

In The Nation article (pub. date June 23, 2008) "Thin ICE," in addition to the profiles of several US citizens whom ICE falsely imprisoned for up to five years, I mention a few statistics. No room to explain in the article, or to review the plights of all 30+ US citizens, but in the next few days I'll elaborate.

The statistics:
The first number I mention is the 276,912 US residents ICE deported in 2007. This figure is straight from an online publication by the Department of Homeland Security, FY07 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Accomplishments. This states:

"ICE implemented a comprehensive interior enforcement strategy focused on more efficiently processing apprehended illegal aliens and reducing the numbers of criminal and fugitive aliens in the United States. In FY07, ICE removed a record 276,912 illegal aliens, including voluntary removals, from the United States."

This high figure is indeed alarming. It means that, like the Nazi government in prewar Germany, the US government has been combing the country for longtime residents and then removing them from the country on the grounds that they are not citizens.

Most of those being deported are being found through the jails and prisons, taken in secret to detention facilities without any notice to their families, and indeed, lying to relatives by saying that the locations are not known. Here's how ICE describes what it's up to:

"ICE’s Criminal Alien Program, which screens aliens in prison to ensure that they are removed from the United States upon the completion of their sentences, initiated removal proceedings against 164,296 criminal aliens."

The problem documented in "Thin ICE" is that many of those deported are actually US citizens. An additional problem is that virtually all of the people who are deported from the prisons and jails are longterm US residents, many of whom were picked up for minor infractions or misdemeanors such as drunk driving and failing to stop for the police, prostitution, possessing a small amount of methamphetamines or marijuana, a barroom brawl perhaps years after a bench warrant was issued when someone failed to show up for a traffic violation. (These examples are drawn from cases with I am familiar.)

Again, think Nazi Germany: you're a Jew taken into the police for drunk driving after a fight with your girlfriend and suddenly no one knows where you are. Or your mother goes to work in the morning and you come home after school and she's gone and no one knows where she is. I am not describing Germany during the 1940s, during the death camps, but in the 1930s when the Nazi government started to make doing business with Jews illegal, and then being Jewish was illegal. This is happening here. This is happening now. I am not suggesting that the next step is death camps, but that this current activity is despicable in itself.

More on the rest of the numbers in "Thin ICE" tomorrow.

Thousands of US Citizens Held or Deported by ICE: Documenting their Cases, Part I

In the article "Thin ICE" published in The Nation magazine (pub. date June 23, 2008), I wrote that since 2004 between 3,500 to 10,000 US citizens had been detained by ICE for one month to five years, and that about half of these citizens had been deported. I also wrote that I had documented 31 of these cases. I have now revised these numbers upward, based on new information on additional cases.

These figures are important because they refute ICE's position that they have deported just one US citizen and that they "do not knowingly detain US citizens." By knowingly detaining US citizens, over whom ICE has no jurisdiction, ICE agents are committing the crime of false imprisonment. When they move US citizens, especially out of the country, against their will, then ICE agents are committing the crime of kidnapping. The attorneys for the people involved have the data from the immigration courts, the prisons, and the documents to back this up. All that is needed is for just a single US attorney to step forward and use this information for a criminal prosecution.

For instance, the case of Neil Rambana's client in Georgia, at the very least has an immigration judge postdating a 2006 order terminating removal proceedings for a US citizen to a 2008 termination order, apparently to justify the continuous illegal incarceration of a US citizen since 2006. He remains incarcerated. (For more on this case, see here and articles tagged David.)

Starting today I will be providing more information on the many cases whose details could not be presented in the Nation article due to space constraints. If anyone wants more information to follow up with the attorneys, please contact me and I can provide that.

There are three types of natural-born citizens, distinct from naturalized citizens. The cases below are all US natural-born citizens, either by birth in the US, or acquired or derived from parents who are US citizens, as was the case for John McCain and George Romney. ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

Under the law anyone telling ICE she was born in the US is presumed to be a US citizen. In order to detain this person, ICE must prove the person is lying. This did not happen in these cases. As you read these, many questions will occur. (For instance, in the case below, why would a police officer write down that someone born in the US was born in Belize?) At some point it may be important to answer these questions--are officers harassing difficult suspects by the use of incorrect place of birth information, knowing this will put people in ICE detention? Are officers racist and trying to deport African-Americans?) The only way to get to the bottom of this is through more local police oversight, Congressional oversight, and, when necessary, civil and criminal prosecutions.

Other cases, with pseudonyms for purpose of easier discussion:

-Eva, Los Angeles resident, African-American woman born in the United States (state unknown) and arrested in February 2008, for a minor drug possession charge. The arresting officer wrote that Eva was born in Belize. Eva has never been to Belize. She was put in ICE custody and taken to the Florence Detention Center in Arizona, where she was held for two months as she saved $1 day from working in the detention center to pay for her birth certificate. (Source: Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Program social worker)

-MarK, Washington state resident, California-born US citizens. Mark was stopped for minor criminal activity and turned over to ICE. Mark had moved from California to Washington when he was three years old. The ICE agent did not believe this statement and, without any proof, wrote that Mark had emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. when he was three. Mark had never stepped foot in Mexico until he was 20. Mark was was held in Takoma and somewhere in Alabama for a total of 9 months. Even though there were no legal grounds for his detention, he was not released until a court hearing, when his pro bono attorney presented Mark's California vaccination records from when Mark was two. The attorney believes that if his mother had not been able to produce this record, then his client would have been deported. No birth certificate was avaialable because Mark's mother was not in the country legally and, fearful of deportation, gave birth in a private home. (Source: (Source: Jorge Barón, Executive Director, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project [NIRP])

-Jason, U.S. citizenship derived from parents who naturalized before he was 18. Born in Belize. Held in detention in California (Mira Loma, I think) for two months after release from prison. (Source: private immigration attorney, Los Angeles).

-John, U.S. citizenship derived from parents who had naturalized before he was 18. Born in Ethiopia. Detained in Takoma over 6 months, NIRP only found out because a self-styled jailhouse lawyer/detainee brought this case to their attention. (Source: Barón, NIRP)

-Michael, U.S. citizenship derived from mother who naturalized before he was 18. Michael was born in Mexico. Michael was held by ICE for four years during his appeals. The FIRRP attorney advising him, but without the time to appear with him during the hearings, was stunned to learn that the judge did not accept the evidence her staff had assembled that clearly documented his US citizenship. Rather than endure more time in Eloy, after four years Michael gave up and signed the deportation order and was removed to Mexico before the FIRRP attorney could see him again.

TO BE CONTINUED!
The image above is from a 2007 protest against the Takoma Detention Center, where Mark and John, US natural-born citizens, were held for several months. See article at Indymedia, Portland here.

US Citizen Falsely Imprisoned by ICE since August 31, 2006. Immigration Court Malfeasance

David, not his real name, had served almost eight years of a ten year prison sentence in Georgia. He was a model inmate, completing his GED and a variety of training classes. With his certificate in geology, David can tell you the right place to look for a woolly mammoth and with his barber training, make sure you won't look like one. If ICE were not running an illegal prison system, right now David, a US citizen, would have served his time and been free for over two years, starting his new life.

Instead, David remains incarcerated in Wilcox Prison. His attorney, Neil Rambana, is, as he puts it, “playing Sherlock Holmes” to try to figure out how ICE, the Georgia Department of Corrections, and the immigration courts arranged to falsely imprison his client and then cover up their misdeed.

Referring to the June 11, 2008 termination from Judge Cassidy, Rambana says: “When they have on the first page that on May 13 he ruled that the respondent had acquired US citizenship at birth, that's a wrong date. In my mind it's obfuscation. We need to get to the bottom of it now.”

The bottom line is that ICE falsely imprisoned David and Rambana caught the immigration court trying to cover this up.

Rambana's not just a sleuth also a terrific advocate. He drove three hours from his offices in Florida to Wilcox Prison in Georgia yesterday and was able to meet with David. Unfortunately, the warden did not honor Judge Cassidy's June 11, 2008 termination order – new parole restrictions were imposed very recently as a post hoc excuse -- and David remains falsely imprisoned. Rambana's priority now is to “move full force to see what the Department of Corrections is going to do to honor the termination order.”

Just the facts:
-In February, 2006 Georgia released David on parole from the Georgia Correctional and into ICE custody.

-ICE held David in the Fulton County jail from February, 2006 until August 31, 2006 during ICE removal proceedings. David wrote the immigration judge Judge William Cassidy a letter explaining that David is a US citizen. David's case was sent to Neil Rambana's office because they do pro bono work for immigrants in ICE custody in the Southeast. Rambana said that if David "had not written that letter, he would have been deported."

-On August 31, 2006 Judge Cassidy issued an order terminating the deportation proceedings. At that date, ICE and the state of Georgia were required to release David. ICE reserved the right to appeal the termination order, but they did not file an appeal. David himself verified that he should have been released by calling the 800 number for the Immigration Courts and punching in his information. The voice recording said that his deportation proceedings had been terminated.

-On August 31, 2006, David continued to be held in Fulton County Jail. The jail told ICE that they had no authority to hold David after the termination proceedings, but instead of releasing him, ICE transferred David to Baldwin Diagnostic Center. He was then shuffled around a few other places. Rambana tried to contact David at the Fulton County Jail and was told he was not there. So Rambana assumed, since the termination order had been issued, that David had been released.

-On May 12, 2008 Rambana was shocked to receive correspondence that David was again in removal proceedings. He assumed that David was picked up for a parole violation and reincarcerated, and then wrongfully put in to deportation proceedings. (Rambana learned only yesterday that David had never been released.) On May 12, Rambana promptly faxed Judge Cassidy a copy of Cassidy's original August 31, 2006 termination order.

-On May 13, 2008 Judge Cassidy issued an order for a telephonic hearing on May 19, 2008. Rambana has this order.

-On May 19, 2008 the telephonic hearing was rescheduled for June 2, 2008 because the Judge missed the window Rambana had arranged for the hearing and it was not available by the time the Judge contacted his office.

-On June 2, 2008, Rambana planned for the rescheduled telephonic hearing but the Judge never called.

-On June 6, 2008, Judge Cassidy called and apologized. There had been an execution in Wilcox Prison on that date, and he said that the government had appealed his decision to terminate proceeding. Rambana told me, “We had no idea about what he was talking about.”

-On June 11, 2008 I published a post on my blog about Rambana's client and contacted someone in a government office that oversees ICE. This person made some inquiries into the matter.

-Late on June 11, 2008, Judge William Cassidy issued an order terminating removal proceedings. The order states that on May 13, 2008 he had issued a previous termination order and that ICE had appealed this order. The June 11 statement makes no reference to Judge Cassidy's August 31, 2006 termination order

David remains in prison and is completely confused. “He doesn't understand why he's still there because he was supposed to be paroled in February, 2006.”

Afternoon of 6/13, from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) timeline. An EOIR officer looked into David's case and sent me this:

"-0n 08/31/06, an immigration judge terminated Mr. Fernandez-Armedariz’s case.
-On 09/29/06, the Department of Homeland Security appealed the immigration judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
-On 03/10/08, the Board of Immigration Appeals remanded the case back to the immigration judge.
-On 06/11/08, the immigration judge terminated the case."

EOIR records at the very least prove that Judge Cassidy altered the timeline of his decisions and ICE appeals in his 6/13/08 decision. And they show that David was falsely imprisoned at the very least from 8/31/06 until 9/29/06, and possibly much longer, depending on whether ICE actually did file an appeal and if was legal for them to hold him while it was pending and without notifying his attorney that this was happening.

ICE and the immigration courts are turning the Constitutional protections of US citizens' liberty into a perverse parlor game of backdating, postdating, and lying about who is in custody, why people are in custody, and when they should be released. The underlying legal and political problem remains: A US citizen was held by ICE the Georgia Department of Corrections because of ICE removal proceedings from February, 2006 until June 11, 2008. As everyone knows, including ICE, ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

David is presently under the control of the Georgia Corrections Department, but his attorney, Rambana, believes they have illegally altered the conditions of his parole from those given in February 2006 and is demanding David's immediate release. Unfortunately, the unlawful conflation of ICE detention with the prison system means that someone with an expertise in immigration law now must maneuver the criminal justice system as well.

The people who should really need criminal lawyers are not be US citizens in illegal detention, but the government thugs violating Congressional mandate of ICE as well as the Constitution and civil rights laws by falsely imprisoning US citizens and other legal residents. Who will be the first US attorney to step up and charge one of these ICE agents with their crimes? (And what is the penalty, if any, for a judge lying about his previous decisions in his own order?)

More on US Citizen's Removal Proceedings in Georgia

David, not his real name, was born in Mexico in 1973. His father was born in Los Angeles in 1925 and met other criteria consistent with David acquiring citizenship by birth. On March 1, 1989 the US Consular General's office in Mexico issued David a letter from the Vice Consul certifying that David had "proved to the Consulate General that he had acquired citizenship" (from Judge Cassidy's June 11, 2008 decision for ICE to terminate deportation proceedings).

In late 1998 David was incarcerated for a crime that had nothing to do with his citizenship status. In 2006, David was to be released on probation, but ICE had other ideas and put him into deportation proceedings. According to Neil Rambana, David's attorney, David was held for 8 months pending a deportation hearing. In August, 2006, Judge William Cassidy accepted the US Consulate General letter certifying David's US citizenship and terminated the deportation proceedings.

Rambana wrote yesterday: "To our surprise on or about May 12, 2008 I received a notice of hearing for May 19, 2008." Rambana replied immediately and referenced the 2006 termination order.

According to Judge Cassidy's decison yesterday, "On May 13, 2008, based on the evidence submitted by Respondent, the court determined that Respondent acquired United States citizenship at birth. As a result Respondent was improperly in removal proceedings and the court terminated proceedings."

Rambana never received a notice of this May 13 hearing or its decision until yesterday.

According to Judge Cassidy, the Department of Homeland Security appealed his second termination order and the Bureau of Immigration Appeals remanded the case back to Cassidy for a written decision. Rambana was flummoxed: he never received a notice of either the May 13 termination order proceedings or an appeal. The first he heard of this was the decision he received late yesterday afternoon, June 11, when Judge Cassidy, for apparently a third time, told ICE to stop its removal proceedings against a US citizen.

David remains incarcerated. Yesterday he was transferred to Wilcox Prison. The reason for the current incarceration and the transfer to a new facility also is not clear at this point; it appears to be based on a probation violation. Mr. Rambano is trying to meet with his client to ascertain these details.

The lesson here, once again, is that ICE is relentless in its persecution of US citizens of Mexican descent, and it is incompetent, a dangerous combination. It is still necessary to ascertain the basis for the dates and decisions Judge Cassidy is referencing, to ensure that these occurred in the order stated and were not written post hoc in response to attorney Neil Rambana's publicization of his client's predicament yesterday.

The image above is a plaque commemorating an 1818 battle between the Telfair County Militia and the Creek Indians in modern Wilcox. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Wilcox County was named after either Mark or John Wilcox, both of whom were officers who fought in the Indian Wars. Wilcox experienced some hard times, but, the Encyclopedia continues, "The population started to climb again in the 1990s, when the Georgia Department of Corrections built Wilcox State Prison." This is where David is presently being held. Previous posts based on information from his attorney indicated David was being held in Lumpkin, Georgia but the dates on this are not clear at this point and that may need to be revised.

Immigration Judge Reorders ICE to Release US Citizen Held in Georgia

Yesterday morning I posted something (see the post below this one) about a US citizen who was detained for 8 months in 2006. Immigration attorney Neil Rambana, in Tallahassee, Florida, who took the case pro bono, argued his client's US citizenship status successfully and the judge terminated the deportation proceedings. But last month Rambana's client was once again being held in a detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia and once again facing removal proceedings. Since mid-May Rambana had been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact ICE attorneys and explain their error, or, as I see it, their crime of false imprisonment.

At 5 pm EST yesterday Rambana received a long overdue note from immigration judge William Cassidy in Atlanta that the client in question once again had his deportation order terminated. The circumstances surrounding this are somewhat confusing, as is the case with many transactions with the immigration bureaucracy. I am waiting until Rambana figures out exactly what happened before posting more details, hopefully later today.

One fact that is clear is that ICE twice detained the same US citizen, who is Latino, for more than 8 months, even though ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens.

The image above is of William Lumpkin, former Senator and Governor of Georgia, and namesake for the town hosting the ICE detention center that held Rambana's client.

Lumpkin made his name by clearing Cherokees out of Georgia. He wrote a book called, Removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, 1827- 1841.

Mary Young, the historian who is my source for this information, writes that Lumpkin's "sudden addiction to Indian removal" was a response to "his flagging political career."

See Mary Young, "The Exercise of Sovereignty in Cherokee Georgia," Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (1990), note 7, citing Carl J. Vipperman, "The 'Particular Mission' of Wilson Lumpkin," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 66 (Fall 1982), 295-316.

ICE Ignores Court Order: Holds US Citizen in Georgia

NOTE: This was accidentally reposted this a.m.and therefore has the wrong time stamp. It was initially posted on June 11; nothing in the content was changed.

This morning I received an email message from Neil Rambana, an immigration attorney in Tallahassee, Florida representing a US citizen ICE is imprisoning in Lumpkin, Georgia. Rambana's client was arrested TWICE:

"In the first case before the Immigration Court I was able to prove citizenship and the judge terminated the process immediately. A few months later they arrested him again and charged him with the same thing. I am working now to prove citizenship once again although it is the same judge and same evidence. Moreover, there is an order in his file evidencing such. It is outrageous."

ICE held his client for eight months in 2006, then his client was detained again in May, 2008:

"To our surprise on or about May 12, 2008 I received a notice of hearing for May 19, 2008. I immediately filed for termination based upon the prior order terminating the matter.. To date, I have been going back and forth to try and speak with the Assistant Chief Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security to see if they will take judicial notice of the prior order of termination, but they have not returned our calls. The Immigration Court has not ruled on my motion to terminate as of today. It is now June and I believe he has been in detention since May, but I am not sure. Efforts to speak with him have been very difficult."

This is not "detention." ICE has a record the client is a US citizen and has no jurisdiction over US citizens. This is false imprisonment and, because it appears that state lines were crossed, also kidnapping.

6/16 update and timeline. The information here was based on Mr. Rambana's information at the time from the immigration judge; since then we have learned that this information was incorrect and the situation is much worse, suggesting an illegal conspiracy to falsely imprison his client, David, among ICE, the Georgia Correctional authorities, and an immigration judge: See here for judge's 6/11 order a cover-up; for the most recent information, go to the tag "David."

The image is from the Correctional Corporation of America website announcing its opening of the Lumpkin, Georgia facility: "Construction on SDC began in 1999. It was halted in 2000, resumed in 2005 and was completed in September 2006 in response to demand for prison and detainee beds. The opening of the facility is indicative of CCA’s strength and growth in its industry."

Centuries of Betrayal

Many of the details about René Saldivar's 8 month detention by ICE I describe in an article in The Nation (June 23, 2008), but space constraints did not permit including everything, so I thought I'd elaborate here.

René Saldivar was born in Mexico in 1967. But his father, Isidoro, was born in Three Point, Colorado, in 1919 and married René's mother before René's birth, and Isidoro met the other requirements for making René a natural born citizen.

Isidoro himself first went to Mexico with his family when he was 11 in 1930. That's when about a million US residents of Mexican descent, around 400,000 of whom were either citizens or legal residents, were illegally removed from the country by immigration raids bearing a shocking resemblance to the ones occurring now.

According to historians Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodrigíz, in their book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (1995): "[D]eportation procedures were made to order for wholesale violations of basic human rights. Mass raids and arrests were conducted without benefit of warrants. Individuals were often held incommunicado and not allowed to see anyone. Without the opportunity to post bail, deportees languised in jail until the next deportation train" (p. 52).

Like today's oversight hearings by the U.S. Congress condemning these abuses, in 1932 the Wickersham Commission exposed and denounced these abuses: "The apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods which are unconstitutional, tyrannic and oppressive" (quoted on pp. 52-53). And like today, the agencies responsible for these abuses simply ignored the charges and continued their violations until the economic climate shifted and Mexicans were once again encouraged to return.

In 1940, at the age of 21, Isidoro Saldivar returned to the United States and started working in Stanislaus County, in Riverbank, where many of his children and their families still live. Some are machine operators at the Conagra plant. René had some problems coping with his father's and mother's deaths in the late 1990s and lives with his sister doing odd jobs and battling his demons, mostly staying free of any entanglements with the law. He served his first and only time in jail last summer, a couple months for a minor drug possession violation.

René's brother-in-law, Pastor Aquiles Rojas was planning to pick him up on his release date of October 12, but René wasn't there. According to ICE spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery, who revealed this in an email to me, Saldivar had actually been put into ICE custody in September. By the time Rojas went to the Modesto Honor Farm jail, Rene´ was in an isolation cell in Eloy, Arizona. He was so traumatized that he'd become catatonic and was given psychotropic drugs.

When I asked Alvarez-Montgomery why the jail wouldn't tell Rojas of Saldivar's location, he said that seemed strange. Alvarez-Montgomery told me that ICE agents are working with the Modesto sheriff's department and they would certainly have access to the database with information about Saldivar's detention.

The same disappearing is happening by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which also did not tell Guzman's family of his whereabouts. They also had ICE-trained agents in their facility, and this had been the means of Guzman's deportation.

As the immigration judge told me, the US is quietly running a secret prison system, holding people without charges and keeping them in isolation from the people who might help gain their legal rights and liberty.

While Rene´ was in Eloy, his family in Riverbank was being harassed by the Modesto Sheriff's department. Twice they raided his sister's house looking to arrest René for missing his probation meetings, even though a probation officer in Modesto told me that when someone is put into ICE custody, this is entered in the inmate's release record. She also told me that this was not taken into account before issuing warrants, and that it was the inmate's responsibility to contact their probation officers, "even if they are deported" and explain the reasons for their absence.

This why Peter Guzman, another deported US citizen, was taken into custody at the border with a warrant for his arrest for missing a probation hearing. The government is abducting the weakest members of our society, and either hiding them from their families, or dropping them off in another country with $3, and then saying that the people who cannot reach their parents, wives, sisters, and children are supposed to be sending letters detailing their legal plight to a probation officer in another state or country.

Here is some more information about how hard it was to find René, as described by his brother-in-law, Aquiles Rojas, who is a US citizen, leads a congregation with about 250 parishoners in Riverbank, and is truly aghast at what occurred.

Unlike many people taken by ICE, René had someone who was a bit resourceful and was persistent in trying to locate him. Rojas said he called numerous immigration offices repeatedly, always leaving messages, never receiving any return calls. When he would reach someone, they never had information: "I left a lot of messages becasue we wanted to find out. I called immigration in Arizona in October. They told me they had no record of Saldivar. I called back to San Francisco. Nobody had no answer. But somebody had to have some record!" Rojas told me, exasperated.

In March, René called. Rojas and his wife drove 12 hours to Eloy to see René. The guards told him visitors were allowed only on weekends and holidays. But it was Good Friday, Rojas , the pastor, pointed out. That didn't count. Also, René had not submitted their names on the appropriate list authorizing visitors, so it would be too late for them to see him that weekend. "'I drove 12 hours from Central California,'" he tried to tell them, but "we weren't able to give him the papers. They don't receive papers. This is worse than the White House. I can talk to someone there. There, you can't talk to no one."

Rojas explained that his wife, René's sister, became a naturalized citizen 12 years earlier, but the other siblings had green cards. The parents "didn't know that the kids were US citizens. They applied for green cards, but i don't know why. It was a mistake. From the beginning they were US citizens."

After learning they couldn't leave the papers with the guards at Eloy Rojas drove about 100 miles to Tucson and mailed René his documents from there. "We also sent money and a pair of tennis shoes. They don't provide tennis shoes. But now I'm finding out they won't receive nothing."

I asked Rojas why he thought this was happening: "I've seen the rise of hatred towards our ethnic group. We see it happens with the Germans to the Jews, with other people, when the economy goes bad you got to blame somebody. There's the feeling that this ethnic group is causing a lot of problems."

Robert's Story, cont.

"Thin Ice," an article I wrote for The Nation about US citizens being detained and deported by ICE, just scratches the surface of the information I gathered in the last few months. Lives really have been shattered. I met Robert, a US citizen deported twice, in his home in Los Angeles last week. He has a wife, who is a nurse, and a son, also named Robert. Robert Jr. was born in 1999. But his father wasn't around for most of his life. Dad was being held either in detention or in prison for no crime other than having a Spanish last name.

That's how Robert says he and dozens of others are screened when the Los Angeles County Jail releases its inmates each day. There are two release areas, one for Whites and Anglos, another for everyone else. "They only stop the people with Latino last names," he told me. I asked if he thought this would happen if his last name were Johnson. He said, "No they would not. It's discriminating." Once he was in the room of racially profiled suspected aliens, the ICE custodial agent looked at Robert's green card, disregarded Robert's assertion that he was a US citizen, and sent Robert to the El Centro Detention Center. One wrong waiting room changed Robert's life.

In Robert's living room we went through a chaotic box of papers, some duplicates, including records for people with similar names who were not him. He showed me the first deposition he gave to a judge on May 29, 2001 in El Centro. It states: "I was adopted by my father and mother of which my father is a native U.S. born citizen, namely [father's name] and mother who is now deceased." He gave this same information to two immigration judges who deported him, one who sentenced him to three years in prison for falsely impersonating a US citizen, and then finally the fourth judge who, with no additional documentation, released Robert on bond.

Robert described the stress of detention, the anxiety about losing his wife, his son, how detention "takes me away from my family. That's what matters to me. It's taking a piece of my heart out. I feel in myself that it was just dehumanized." Robert also feels a tremendous amount of guilt because he knows that because of his absence, they suffered. When he came home "it was very poor. In the refridgerator, they had no food." All those years away take a toll. Things between them are improving but it's still a sore point. "I still hear my wife, bringing it to my face: 'Only if you weren't deported. Only if you had your papers. It's the only thing. We're always fighting because of the fact of so many years [that I was gone]."

Even apart from missing his family, time in detention was hard: "I seen people in that process, in the immigration courts, they kill themselves. They kill themselves." Robert told me of the stress he felt, the building up of tension in his head so he thought it might explode, that he might explode, that he had no way to leave even though he never should never have been there, and he said that there were a lot of people in his same situation.

At a number of points it seemed that Robert's memory was slipping, that he would go back and forth between the narrative of his first trial and that of his second. Part of the reason for this is that he was shuffled all over the place, to several detention centers and several judges. But these are also symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

Robert's in construction, framing, and is happy to have work right now. But he's in almost constant pain because of an injury from when he was in El Centro. He threw his back out throwing heavy pails of water to clean the floors. He did this for $1 a day "because sometimes at night you're hungry and want a snack." It is surprising that a few hundred detainees in Guantanamo have caused such a fuss but there is little outcry about the approximately 22,000 people going to sleep tonight in detention facilities in the far corners of the US mainland, who are not accused of any crime at all -- or they would be in the penal system -- many doing hard labor in exchange for a little snack.

ICE Deporting and Detaining US Citizens by the Thousands

For the past few months I've been interviewing lawyers, ICE agents, an immigration judge, law professors, and detainees themselves in order to document the procedures ICE is using to illegally incarcerate between 3,500 to 10,000 U.S. citizens since 2004. Many of them are held in Eloy, Arizona at a detention center pictured on the left and run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

Today The Nation magazine published an article I wrote based on that research, called "On Thin Ice." You can read the article here. Future posts will share much more information that space did not permit for inclusion in the Nation article.

I'm kinda bummed that The Nation went with the image of Peter Guzman returning to the US in its online version because the Guzman case is relatively well-known and my reporting indicates that the problem goes far beyond Guzman's experiences.

If you have any other stories to add about ICE abuses, please let me know as I have decided to write a book about this.

Israel's Document Fraud

My colleague Lisa Hajjar just returned from testifying as an expert witness at the deportation hearing on Monday, May 12, 2008 of Mohammad Qatanani, 44, an imam in New Jersey who has lived in the United States since 1995. AP covered the first day's testimony and you can read the International Herald Tribune version here.

Qatanani is being accused of hiding from the U.S. a 1993 conviction by the Israeli military courts, grounds for deportation. Hajjar told the judge that she did not believe Qatanani really was convicted, and that it appeared that Israel had invented this conviction only for purposes of depriving him of a U.S. green card, after Qatanani had established himself as a popular imam in New Jersey.

The main evidence for this speculation is that the United States had no records that indicated Qatanani had been convicted of anything, but had produced only an Israeli statement that Qatanani had been convicted of something (not clear what the charge was) in a NON-military court, where Qatanani had never been charged. According to Hajjar, the only conviction record Israel attached was for another individual altogether, someone whose inclusion in Qatanani's file seemed random.

This event seems consistent with other ICE document fraud, where either ICE attorneys assert that legitimate records aliens present are not legitimate, or, as in the case, present documents that do not establish the ICE attorneys' claims. Fortunately for Qatanani he has a good legal team with the resources to hire experts who could pick up on these problems and explain them to the judge, much to the exasperation of the ICE attorneys, Hajjar told me. But imagine the 95% of cases in which aliens lack attorneys, much less professors, to testify on their behalf.

Qatanani himself testifies on June 2, 2008. (Image of Mohammed Qatanani, second from right, with his family, from http://www.americans4qatanani.org/)

Rep. Steve King's (R-IA) Crime Control: Deport Native-Born Men

I was just listening to Steven King, the minority member on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law suggest that although it was a shame that Peter Guzman's mother had to go through the morgues of Tijuana looking for him, relatives in the United States have to go to the morgues, too:

I would point out there are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters that go to morgues every day in America because of the failure to enforce immigration laws. 27% of inmates in penitentiaries are criminal aliens.

At least as outrageous as trying to downplay the desperation and horror of a mother searching for her U.S.-born, cognitively impaired son in Tijuana morgues, is the insinuation that criminals are more likely to be foreign born than U.S. natives.

Only a small percentage of the total prison population are in federal institutions. Most are held in state and local prisons or jails. According to the Department of Justice, 6.7% of the entire prison population is foreign-born, but about 13% of the U.S. population is foreign-born. This means that King's own demographic of the native born is overrepresented in the prison population.

Indeed an SSRC study using census data also found that within respective ethnic and racial groups, immigrants across the board were less likely than native born citizens to be incarcerated.
Considering that men are 90% of the prison population and that King is a man, perhaps his first step in controlling crime by statistical grandstanding would be to deport himself, maybe to a quiet, remedial math camp somewhere in Europe. (The man on the right in the photo from King's webpage is King.)

ACLU Sues DHS and Others for "Deportation" of Pedro/Peter Guzman

The ACLU complaint on behalf of Peter Guzman filed on February 27, 2008 provides the first clear statement of the activities leading to what the ACLU calls Guzman's "illegal deportation," but might be better viewed as plain and simple criminal kidnapping. What else to call an organized effort to remove someone from the state without their consent? According to the complaint, Guzman was delusional part of the time in custody. Before this occurred and Guzman gave information on his birthplace, the Sheriff's Department correctly recorded this as California.

The complaint provides the first detailed narrative of the U.S. government's failure to obtain Guzman's consent before putting him on a bus on May 11, 2007, without his wallet or California driver's license, and dropping him off in Tijuana, where he knew no one.

Based on the details of this document I am further convinced that the ACLU is being too easy on the government. An "illegal deportation" is an oxymoron, as is the much more common violation of the "illegal arrest." Both of these weight the intentions of state actors in a manner law does not afford private individuals. The actions associated with the "illegal arrest" and even more so for an "illegal deportation" are indistinguishable from kidnapping, which really is the crime (and not just civil claim) that the government should be charging Chertoff et al. with committing. (For an explanation of why Guzman's forcible removal against his will from the USA meets the criteria of kidnapping, read this posting, based on the initial habeas complaint.)

If the state is acting against the law then the putative purpose claimed as the motive for that behavior, i.e., executing the law, is not relevant to defining the state's actions. If a law is not executed lawfully then these actions are not furthering the execution of the law and should be assessed on their own merits.

If I am trying to feed my family and steal food to accomplish that, I am not charged with "illegal caregiving," but theft. If I am unable to accomplish my benign purpose of assisting Mexicans excluded from the U.S. and I drive them into the USA, I am not charged with "illegal job support" but human trafficking.

In other words, state actors should be held accountable for the egregious actions that it commits against people in violation of all of the laws. When a failed execution of a law occurs, then the actions done on its behalf should receive no special protections because they were done by state actors. Indeed, if anything, the scrutiny and punishment of these illegal actions should be much more severe than that directed against private individuals, precisely because of the power these people wield.

Steroids and the Decade of Decline

In a few hundred years, students will learn about The Decade of Decline, the ten years when the United States lost its honor, wars, and money, and any hope of regaining these. It might go something like this:

The long descent began after an ancient Republican clan, Silverfootinmouth, instructed its minions to make sure that the youngest male Silverfootinmouth would ascend to the throne.

The public had voted for a rival clan's more gifted son, but advisers in the kingdom's court were loyal to the Silverfootinmouth family. Also, though they did not speak of this to Silverfootinmouth the Elder, many longtime court officials knew the youngest son to be a fool and were eager to install him as cover for their own nefarious ends. So it came to pass that four men (and one sad woman) loyal to Silverfootinmouth the Elder lied and said Gore, the rival, had not received votes in the province run by the eldest son of Silverfootinmouth, and that therefore the Silverfootinmouth family once more would rule the kingdom.

Gore knew of Silverfootinmouth's trickery, but was worried about civil war and conceded to avoid faction. Gore was a good, if somewhat naive, man and even in defeat tried to help his country. In a short period of time he was able to persuade the citizenry of their folly with fossil fuels, the source of energy that in time killed the civilization. Gore even won an important world prize for this. Alas, by then it was too late. Gore's country was already being consumed by the rising seas. The magic Prius and other advanced vehicles from the East arrived too late to save them. During one of the most tragic weeks, Hurricane Katrina washed out the levies, homes, and people from a once vibrant city called New Orleans, the underwater ruins about 20 miles southeast from the shores of Baton Rouge.

Soon after young Silverfootinmouth became King -- they called it President then, though the county tended to be run by people from a few families-- the country was attacked by men who were from a land where the Silverfootinmouth clan had old friends. It would be unthinkable for young Silverfootinmouth--also known as Shrub, the name given him by a wise woman from his village--to attack those people, but he would look weak if he did nothing.

Shrub's advisers, who had enemies in a different country that was near the country of the attackers, persuaded Shrub to invade that other country instead, even though they knew it had no role in the assault on their people. These advisers were better at pretending to be smart than young Silverfootinmouth, but in fact they also were very silly men. According to one story, which is very comical but still may be true, the main adviser to the King was trying to shoot a duck and instead shot his friend in the face.

The war against the people who never attacked the United States went very badly, costing the country its vast fortune and thousands of its people's lives. And yet the citizens still were afraid because the people who attacked them were not caught. Four years after Shrub first seized power, the people voted by a slim margin for him to continue as their leader.

The country's decline would become permanent. Shrub let the people who worked for him give away the kingdom's gold to their rich friends who ran the banks. The bankers then lent the money to poor people and charged them high rates of interest. It was really fun for while because the bankers were able to make money from lending the government's money and the poor people were able to spend the money, but eventually the bankers ran out of gold and the poor people couldn't repay the loans.

Once there was no more money, Shrub and the politicians for the poor people were very sad and worried, until they realized that money DOES grow on trees and they could just print more of it. The people were all very happy when they learned that the government was going to be sending money to them.

Most narratives of the Ten Year Decline might stop at this point, because the ending might appear self-evident. But just as today, there may be an inquiring student, needing a bit more detail to understand the era's follies. Why didn't the other politicians, called Democrats, do something?

Seated under tents by the dozens because earlier generations decided to privatize education and because the drought in North America had killed all the trees, the students might listen to a wise teacher's chestnut anecdote:

U.S. soldiers were killing themselves in foreign lands, families were being thrown out of their homes, and government agents had kidnapped men in orange suits and were suffocating them with wet towels on an island that disappeared after the 23 Year Rain.

The Senators were in despair. Overwhelmed by the country's actual problems, they agreed amongst themselves to focus on the difficulties faced by their professional athletes.

This was one activity that seemed to make everybody happy. Senator Arlen Spector started this when he learned that a football team called The Patriots had cheated when they played the team from his state called The Eagles. (A worker for the Patriots had videotaped the secret code from The Eagles' coach to the quarterback.) Senator Spector was upset when he learned that the videotapes had been destroyed. He said this was as bad as the government destroying videotapes of shoving wet towels in people's mouths.

Some people complained and said that U.S. agents shoving wet towels in peoples mouths to suffocate them was torture and destroying evidence of this was worse than what the National Football League did, but no one listened to them.

Instead, encouraged by the example of Senator Spector's football investigation, Senate fans of baseball decided they could cheer up their constituents by holding hearings about whether a very famous baseball player had lied about taking drugs that would make his pitches harder for players to hit. The same day of the hearing King Shrub announced that the citizens would be receiving between $300 to $800.

The Tragedy of Kosovar Independence

While Bush hopscotches his way through Africa, trying to avoid the many war zones, it should be clear that the last thing the world needs is another border.

The borders in Africa and everywhere else are superstitious creations meant to ward off an imaginary evil other. Whether created by tribal chiefs, post-WWI mapmakers, or modern kings and bureaucrats, these demonized others are flesh and blood people whose lives have never been constrained by strange lines in the sand.

Indeed, the hybridity and movement of populations explains the presence of Orthodox Greek Serbians in the ruins of the Muslim Ottoman Empire that had conquered them; Albanians in Serbia; and the presence of Serbians in the Kosovo, who were ethnically cleansed by the Albanians following the Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA) attacks on Serbian police in 1998.

The recent unhappy history of the former Yugoslavia's disintegration began in 1991, when Germany decided to flex its newly found diplomatic muscles following reunification and chart a foreign policy distinct from the U.S. by recognizing Croatia as an independent state, thus transforming minor skirmishes between small militias into a full-blown regional war with foreign invasions by Britain, the U.S., and NATO.

Seven years later, and three years after the Dayton Accords established recognized governments of independent Croatia, Republic Macedonia, and the Federated Bosnia-Herzegovina, in addition to Slovenia, the nationalist Albanians who were citizens of Serbia decided that the only way they could achieve their dream was through violence.

The KLA decided that the only way to gain the respect and attention of the international community was to kill Serbian police and then expose their fellow Albanian-Serbians to the collective punishment they knew would follow, and lead in turn to the international intervention that would elevate them to nationhood. Just the way it worked for the Croatians.

Here's what a journalist sympathic to the KLA wrote in 1998:

They organized their own parallel Albanian-language schools, their own medical services, and even their own informal tax collectors to pay for it all. They held unauthorized, Kosovo-wide elections that made Ibrahim Rugova, an almost Gandhian advocate of nonviolence, the unofficial "president of Kosovo." And since they weren't killing people, the world ignored their plight. In the last two years, a few frustrated Kosovars formed a "Kosovo Liberation Army" that carried out a few attacks on Serbian police. But the province was still almost entirely peaceful until February when Milosevic sent in his police to massacre several villages where individuals linked to the KLA were thought to live.

(Source: Gwen Dwyer, "Serbia the Ultimate Loser of Carnage in Kosovo," Post and Courrier, Charleston, August 8, 1998:A11.)

In 1998 Albanians living in Kosovo, Serbia, had been suffering the indignities of not being able to use Albanian for official purposes and employment discrimination. These actions by Serbia are unjust but they are no more unjust than the official policy of most other countries.

How different is this from the U.S. requiring English and not Spanish be used in Texan hospitals and schools? Imagine if the United States government were asked to endure Mexican-Americans in the Southwest establishing a separate government and collecting taxes? Would the systematic discrimination against Mexican-Americans today--the official denial of their ability to speak their language and run their own schools--be sufficient to trigger sympathy for large Mexican-American cities in the U.S. becoming independent states? And what if some Mexican-American terrorists, equivalent to the Albanian-Serbian KLA, started to attack the Anglo police who were working in the Southwest, precipitating violent retribution against the population and the occupation of forces from Russia, Canada, and other Latin American countries, which is roughly analogous to the occupation of Serbia's Kosovar region by the U.S., Britain, and other European troops?

The new, self-declared Prime Minister of Kosovo is the man who led the KLA attacks on Serbian police ten yers ago, Hashim Thaci. Although at present only Kosovar Albanians see Thaci as their leader, he is poised to receive receive recognition from the United States, Germany, Britain, and France shortly. Russia and of course Serbia will not recognize Kosovo as a state and have asked the United Nations not to do so either. Several countries in the European Union also do not want to recognize Kosovo, as they have their own secessionist movements with which to contend. According to the New York Times today, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Romania oppose Kosovar independence.

Kosovo's ability to split the EU on foreign policy is itself another symptom of how new borders create new divisions. If it is to be a unifying regional political body, the EU needs a single foreign policy. Kosovar autonomy and any other question that provokes debates on sovereignty will undermine this. In the end, the debate shows that despite the best intentions, the nation-state cannot accommodate peace. The answer is not the proliferation of more nation-states but their demise altogether.

Instead of recognizing Kosovo, the world would be better off depriving all states of the ability to control movement and membership by the use of ancestry, language, or any other criterion other than the desire to establish residence.

Kosovo is poised to be independent because of a temper-tantrum that elicited brutal corporal punishment and brought in the child protection service, and this produced another bully that has already been smacking around its own peers. Kosovo's situation is morally no worse than any other country, but it is no better, either.

For a look at how the Kosovar's Orthodox Greek Serbians have documented the bombing of their churches and arson to their homes in recent years by Kosovar's Muslim Serbians, look here, the source of the image above of a man in 2004 peeing at a destroyed 19th century Orthodox church in Prizren.

Race and the California Primary

Race Politics Are Everywhere and Nowhere
The race question in this presidential election seems to be everywhere and nowhere. It's the first time an African American has a credible chance of becoming President, but neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton has made race a point of contention.

The brief ruckus when Clinton suggested Lyndon Johnson was more important than Martin Luther King Jr. in passing the Civil Rights Bill was about different views of how power works, not race, and has been largely forgotten. Both Obama and Clinton credibly avow commitments to people of color, and their social and economic policies will have roughly the same effects.

The White House Must Stay White
Nonetheless the media have played up the possibility that the electorate will remain fixated on race. The angle has been that people of color are worried that the White majority will not countenance a Black president (unless he's in a television show starring Kiefer Sutherland). A journalist for Politico posted an article just before the South Carolina election claiming "Black Voters Fear DC Unready for Black President," and then Obama went on to win all but three counties in that state. But that same night Latino voters in Nevada went for Clinton.

Si Se Puede?
Race has been a factor, but not in the way the pundits predicted. In the topsy turvy racial politics of the U.S., Obama, the "si se puede" candidate, the only one who supports drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, is losing among Mexican-Americans and winning among White men. Exit polls showed that White men supported Obama by 18 points over Clinton. Meanwhile, Black voters have refuted anecdotal accounts of their anxieties. He's receiving around 85% of the African-American vote.

Why Clinton's Brown Appeal?
In last night's California primary, Latinos voted 2 to 1 for Clinton and Asian Americans voted for her 3 to 1. Why were African Americans and White men in an alliance that did not include Latinos and Asian Americans? There probably is no single explanation but one clear result is that the voters who may keep Obama out of the White House are more likely to be from the barrios than Beverly Hills. (Image is from appearance at National Council of Law Raza.)

"Caramel" Opens Tonight

"Caramel" was written by and stars the director, Nadine Labaki. It is the Lebanese submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and screened at Cannes.

Labaki hews closely to the advice "write what you know." The film is set in a Beirut beauty parlor in a Christian neighborhood and is based on people Nadine observed. Most of the cast are non-actors, though you'd never know.

"Caramel" has received terrific reviews, including analogies to Pedro Almodovar's work. I've been telling my friends it's like "Sex in the City" set in Beirut. It's a subtle and humorous exploration of the friendship and challenges faced by an intergenerational group of women. There is a great range of characters, from a crazy old lady who collects traffic citations from windshields to the butch lesbian who fixes the generator and washes hair, and develops a simmering relationship with one of the clients.

Labaki is an accomplished actress and music video director whose work is widely admired in the Middle East. Over drinks after the screening a Palestinian filmmaker told Nadine that his mother in Nazareth was a huge fan and that if Nadine came to their city the whole town would come to a stop.

Nadine smiled and then looked sad. Because of her citizenship, Israel and Lebanon both make such a visit impossible.

If you want to support its wider release, and have a great evening, go see "Caramel" this weekend.

Wendy Brown's Talk: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and the Nation-State

Yesterday I had the opportunity to join colleagues at UCLA's Mellon Workshop "Cultures in Transnational Perspective" and hear Wendy Brown discuss two recent essays she wrote: “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy” and “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-democratization”. Wendy's always been one of my favorite lecturers. I especially appreciate her efforts in grappling with the academic and political Zeitgeists of the moment, and to respect her readers and listeners enough to give them nuanced readings and acknowledge her audience's possible objections to her analyses. If it's a parry with her own communities of "Women's Studies" or "the Left" Wendy's comments tend to provoke, sometimes with the point of provocation and that's also for the good.

Brown's Argument
In these particular essays, Brown defines "neoliberalism" and explores its differences and historical overlaps with "neoconservativism." She proposes that the neoliberalism of today -- its exact moment of origin is not stated -- is different from earlier expressions of neoliberalism. The distinctly horrible effects of neoliberalism today is its absorption of the entire government, so that a market rationality pervades all decision-making, and citizens come to understand themselves as consumers and lose sight of democracy's less instrumental possibilities.

Brown identifies herself as a Marxist and with radical critiques of politics, but things today are bad enough that she calls for a return to old fashioned "classical liberalism." Basic values such as rights, equality, and the rule of law that Marxists ridiculed turn out to have some value in themselves and are crucial if democracy is to be re-established.

Discussion
During the discussion Brown was asked a number of questions that seemed to press her to go further in the analytic distinctions she was making. Among these were 1) whether she was nostalgic for an era that perhaps never existed and, 2) whether she was sufficiently attentive to the meanings of "democracy."

As UCLA political theorist Juliet Williams pointed out in her comment (and in her terrific book Liberalism and the Limits of Power), a version of democracy is alive and well in popular culture. Top-rated shows such as "American Idol" and "America's Top Model" suggest Americans love to vote. What are the examples from U.S. American political history or from Brown's thought experiments that might instruct us on more desirable expressions of democracy? Brown replied this was a good question and said she might think further about how she was defining democracy.

Brown responded to questions on whether she was sufficiently attentive to the long history of U.S. politics that has been profoundly antiliberal, antiegalitarian, and unconcerned with the rule of law – slavery, prohiting women from voting, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, Jim Crow, dropping the atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, assassinating leaders that threatened corporate interests abroad, etc. etc. etc.-- by agreeing, as she did in her essays, that the history of liberal democracy in the USA has been a troubled one.

I followed up by asking why, recognizing the family resemblance between earlier episodes violating liberal democratic ideals and those today, she chose to emphasize the differences and not the similarities. If generations of people who earlier expressed outrage over the events listed above could not push their government toward liberal democracy, why do we think we can do this?

Brown made the reasonable point that things today are different, and therefore she is calling for us to challenge the particularities of neoliberalism's current constellations to overthrow these now. A fair enough point, but it raises the question of criteria for deciding on what counts as “different enough” to justify this special attention to today's crises.

If it turns out that the violation of the rule of law in invading Iraq, for instance, has a lot in common with the violation of the rule of law in the Spanish-American War, when the United States seized Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain, then it seems politically urgent to question not only the broader institutional contours of government that make possible repeated violations of liberal democratic norms but to ask whether “liberal democracy” is a possibility for the United States or any country that doesn't live near ice floes.

Bringing Back in the Nation
Instead of a relatively recent tension between competing ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, which Brown maps out quite convincingly, is it possible that Hegel was right, and that market rationality and norms of a moral authoritarianism can happily coexist as the means of institutionalizing the particularities of the nation-state? If this is right, then the current phenomena Brown describes are merely the most recent examples of a citizenry that is happy to exist as citizens who are consumers and, if not democrats, then joined to the state as nationalists. Their membership is consequential not because they vote or because America stands for particular ideals, but because America is America, their America. This is Mike Rogin's argument in his essays on demonology, that it is U.S. nationalism and anti-Russianism that fuels the anti-communism, and not vice-versa.

Hegel himself believed that the social contract theories of individual rights were a joke and impossible. A country that expects its members to die for it – in other words, any political society based on birth—is not going to guarantee individual rights for the sake of the individual, and the same goes for democratic rights. As long as the nation is the source of people's identities and political commitments, liberal democracy may be not just an illogical theory, as Hegel believed, but also an impossible political goal.

(By the way, the url in the screenshot above is from the United States Postal Service, and is the redirect if you type in www.usps.gov, which is supposed to be the url for any government agency. Try typing in usps.gov and see what happens. The USPS is run by Congress and the .com in its url has always bugged me. I wrote a note on the complaint box a few weeks ago but no one replied. In the event, the desire of a government agency to represent itself as a private firm is one of many examples of the neoliberalism ethos Brown is describing.)

The Crime Is Torture, Not Only Obstruction Of Justice

Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced yesterday that he was authorizing an investigation into the CIA's destruction of videotapes. Here's part of what he said:

“Following a preliminary inquiry into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations, the Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation as outlined below."

Note that this announcement makes no reference to the underlying activity being videotaped, i.e., waterboarding, which is torture and illegal under U.S. law, although the Senate, including Democrats Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer on the Judiciary Committee, voted to confirm Mukasey without his acknowledging this, a bad judgment that is now coming back to haunt us.

Mukasey's framing of the investigation is a problem for two reasons. First, it takes the spotlight off the real problem, which is destroying people, not videotapes. This is something the U.S. Congress seems happy to accommodate because the Democrat leadership had been advised of these activities and not objected. Jane Harmon (D-CA) only asked that she receive copies of the tapes, and therefore only can object to not being given these. Ditto for Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House (D-CA), who also was briefed on the U.S. torture of detainees and did not object. However, the U.S. media did not sign onto this free pass for the government to torture and it is disturbing that they are not asking more questions about this.

A second problem is that narrowing the investigation to the circumstances leading to the destruction of the tapes significantly limits the exposure of the CIA to charges of illegality. It appears that various officials in the U.S. Congress and also the 9-11 Commission had requested these tapes. But it is not clear that failing to comply with an interagency request is a criminal and not administrative failing. The obstruction of justice charge for which Scooter Libbey was convicted came out of his lying to the FBI. But members of Congress and a Presidential Commission are not part of the Department of Justice, and therefore it seems likely that failure to comply with a request from these branches of government could be construed as a case of bad office management, even if willfully defiant. The videotapes were never subpoenaed, only requested by individual members, and it is doubtful that any time a federal agency is nonresponsive to a request from a member of Congress that the violation is criminal. Indeed that seems unlikely.

It is of course possible that CIA agents or White House staff might give statements admitting that they believed the videotapes were destroyed out of a concern they would provide evidence that might be used against them for violating the law against torture, and this could be used against them. Here's the statutory language defining "obstruction of justice," from the United States Code, Section 18, 1519:

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Again, this does appear to be what occurred but this is a far lesser crime than torturing people.

Perhaps if Senators Feinstein and Schumer had backed up the other Democrats on the Judiciary who voted against Mukasey's confirmation because he would not affirm waterboarding torture, then we would have an Attorney General who would be launching an investigation into what actually occurred. The person who did the interrogation is giving interviews admitting that he tortured, so the absence of the videotapes is not a problem. In fact, the CIA is trying to have the Justice Department investigate the agent for disclosing his activities, which means they are acknowledging his account's veracity.

Since the investigation is being vetted through the Justice Department and not a special counsel, it is up to Mukasey to decide on whether to prosecute the CIA for torture, and he's already on record for giving waterboarding a free pass. In fact precisely because of the destruction of the tapes he may even try to fidget out of this by saying that absent the evidence he cannot say with certainty whether torture occurred, which was his line during the hearings, one that seems to have been crafted in cahoots with the White House anticipating exactly this unfolding of events. But again, this is not the fault of the White House, but of the Democrats who could have easily stopped this and did nothing. (The image is from a CNN article about John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent who admitted he tortured Al Qaeda suspects.)

No One Should Be Illegal: Oklahoma Denying Health Care to Citizens without Documentation

It is a sign of the impoverishment of this country's immigration debate that the most traction to be gained against kooks who listen to Lou Dobbs comes from instances of the state misapplying its discriminatory policies, and not the inherent unfairness of the policies even if they were to be administered correctly.

The latest example of this is a report I heard this morning (Christmas) on NPR about Oklahoma denying poor legal residents access to health benefits because of rules designed to prevent undocumented aliens from receiving aid. Here's an excerpt from an article from the Oklahoma newspaper the Muskogee Phoenix:

"A law designed to remove illegal aliens from public assistance has instead denied thousands of U.S. citizens their Oklahoma SoonerCare benefits. SoonerCare is a state program through which Medicaid services are managed. The federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 changed how states verify the citizenship of recipients. U.S. citizenship has always been necessary, but the new law requires documentation such as a birth certificate."

Oklahoma Health Care Authority spokesperson Nico Gomez said most of the 5,841 people whose SoonerCare benefits were terminated Dec. 1 are probably U.S. citizens:

"'The reason we can make that assumption is because that has been the pattern in other states,' he said. 'Some of the letters we sent have been returned as undeliverable.'"

More direct evidence of the law limiting benefits due citizens are the demographic features of the applicants denied. The article above states: "58 percent are Caucasian; 18 percent are African-American; 13 percent are American Indian; 10 percent are Hispanic and one percent are Asian." Among the program participants, 62 percent are children.

Equally disturbing is that not only are U.S. citizens and undocumented adult aliens being denied care, but Oklahoma politicians are trying to deny prenatal care to "illegal" fetuses (and whoever else is caught in that ugly net). In a separate development, as reported in the Tulsa World on October 10, 2007, legislators in Oklahoma are trying to reverse an Oklahoma Health Care Authority policy that will allow all pregnant women to receive prenatal care. The policy is presently in effect, but is likely to be overturned by a legislature appealing to the nativist bigots who dominate blue and red states alike. According to Randy Terrill, the policy is a "'dangerous precedent' and 'we cannot allow Oklahoma to subsidize illegal activity,'" i.e., being a fetus without a state license.
The rhetoric is another case of nationalism trumping fundamentalism, a point that was made somewhat differently by a Democrat in the Oklahoma Senate,Tom Adelson: "Anyone who professes to embrace a culture of life would not turn their back on 2,800 innocent children born each year in Oklahoma."

But enough of parsing humanity. There is no rational reason that a fetus should have more claim to health care than someone who is 80, and no good reason that someone born in Mexico City should not be allowed the legal privileges of being born in Tulsa. The argument against illegality is tautology and the argument based on cost hubris. Leaving aside the pragmatic benefits of a prenatal health program touted by the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, no computer is powerful enough to produce definitive figures on the total financial impact of removing impediments to free movement, and those who have made this effort generally find the economic arguments will not support the nativists.
(Image is from U.S. government site on history of Native American health care by federal government.)

On The Shock Doctrine

On Wednesday, November 28, 2007 I heard Naomi Klein speak at NYU to a standing room only audience about her most recent book, Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein actually was sharing the stage with my colleague Lisa Hajjar, an expert on torture and international law. The main argument Klein put forward was that the Chicago School of economic theory initiated by Milton Friedman advanced a program of what became known as neo-liberalism (and is now called neo-conservatism) that was so unpopular in developing countries that it could be advanced only by the use of brute force. Torture was not used to gain information but to terrorize populations so that they would not resist the economic policies imposed by dictators influenced by an ideology that nurtured cronyism and corporatism.

The argument is an intriguing one but it is not ultimately sustainable because it ignores the role nationalism played in establishing these military regimes, the nationalism of the U.S. as well as the developing countries. Hajjar began her talk by trying to elide the difference between Klein's analysis and Hajjar's own focus on the nationalism informing the Israeli use of torture, subtly mentioning national security as an independent ideology also allowing governments to impose practices that otherwise would be opposed but without mentioning the absence of neo-liberalism in many contexts. During the Q and A I asked Klein about this. To paraphrase, I suggested that there are numerous examples of torture that is not being done to advance neo-liberal agendas; and there are numerous examples of neo-liberal reforms that did not require torture. In fact some populations accept torture and other repressive policies used on their fellow citizens out of nationalist fervor, and not because they are afraid. I also mentioned the U.S. Congress's rejection of the immigration bill last summer as an example of the majoritary's nationalism trumping the alleged neo-liberal values of economic elites.

Klein replied that by privatizing homeland security, neo-liberalism has absorbed
nationalist values. Homeland security and nationalism is another avenue to make money--and the private security firms in Iraq would be another example. Her point was that capitalists have figured out how to make money off of nationalism--a lot of money--and therefore the business community no longer sees nationalism as antagonistic to their agenda.

For reasons I'll explain below, I don't buy this dismissal of the role of nationalism in perpetrating state violence, and nationalism's incommensurability with liberalism, but Klein seemed to know a lot and I bought her book. Although her central political point is not supportable, the narrative masterfully weaves together microanalyses of historically independent episodes from the CIAs mind control research in 1950s Canada to the compromised role of the Ford Foundation in supporting Friedman's South American economic shock troops to detailed stories of neoliberal programs from Chile to South Africa to Poland and Russia. The theory is wrong but Klein's facts are one important piece of the story about government repression and she is an outstanding writer.

Here's the problem: Klein is partly right but neoliberalism is not the complete story, and not even the most important one in most contexts. Everyone from Israel to Iraq tortured for reasons that had nothing to do with neoliberalism, and the U.S. "war on terror" has nothing to do with neoliberal agendas, though these accommodate the war. Klein does not want to discuss noneconomic motives for torture and state violence because focusing on the nationalism explicitly invoked by the various political and military leaders who are her protagonists in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Poland, and Russia, is not good for Klein's 1990s "anti-globalization" agenda. Klein comes out of the anti-NAFTA, anti-GATT, anti-WTO movements that were advancing the very parochial, nationalist commitments of the juntas who were torturing people.

This is not to say that so-called indigenous peoples protesting in Seattle favored torture or any other policies of the death sqauds, but it is to say that the belief in a "native" people that should be protected from "outsiders" was also an ideology the Nazis shared and that in less dramatic circumstances appears in political contexts worldwide.

For instance, in today's elections, Putin did not receive 61% of the vote in Russia because people are pleased with his economic reforms, or because he is torturing people, but because he has been bellicose in defying the U.S. on Russian defense (recently withdrawing from a treaty that would have limited Russian army presence near European borders), renationalization (not privatization) of oil, and feeding bigotry against non-Russian residents. And in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is telling voters that voting against the Constitutional change that would make him a dictator is the same as voting for George Bush. In other words, dictators are gaining power from majorities to deprive people of civil rights from the people themselves because of nationalism and not merely compliance under the threat of force.

Klein's story is one of WTO strong arm tactics against suffering developing economies, but the truth always has been that rich countries have had more money to devote to protecting their domestic industries than have poor countries. As long as the WTO could be enforced across the board and rich countries did not evade the rulings it promised to help developing countries, and now this promise is bearing fruit as developing countries are using the WTO mechanism to file complaints against the U.S., a fact Klein ignores. For instance, in July, 2007 Brazil filed a claim against the U.S. for subsidizing agricultural exports.

The Left seems still to have an easy time talking about economic inequality and political economic structures of oppression, but a very hard time grappling with nationalism and embracing cosmopolitanism. Today's Left would not be responsive to servants of aristocrats worried about the fading of old world culture alongside the demise of feudalism, but reveal a misplaced sentimentality for "indigeneity," a code word for nativism or nationalism. (For more on the nationalist and not economic motives for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, see this posting.) Perhaps a way to bring together Klein's persuasive account of the state robberies that required extreme violence with the nationalism that accompanied this is to refuse to use the Chicago
School's language of liberalization altogether. As Klein points out, the main thrust of the plans was privatization. Robbers also like to privatize. This has nothing to do with liberalism.

Instead of a compatbility between liberalism, neo- or otherwise, and nationalism--the ostensible narrative--Klein's is a story of nationalism and force, assisted by a lie that these were outcomes of open markets and choice. If only these reforms really were liberal, and not the expression of U.S. military priorities determined by its Cold War with Russia, as well as the nationalism and greed motivating the repressive forces in other countries as well. Klein herself begins with the CIA's Cold War development of shock therapy but then fails to see how the facts she discovers mark a trail of nationalist and not just economic pathways of violence.

Again, this is a compelling book presenting fascinating material with clarity, intelligence, and passion.