Justice dept. grants Haddad new deportation hearing

By Louie Meizlish
Daily Staff Reporter  On  September 25th, 2002

Local Muslim leader Rabih Haddad will be granted a new deportation hearing, the U.S. Justice Department announced yesterday, in a move that prevents Haddad's release in the coming days.

In the meantime, the department will appeal a federal court order from last Tuesday that gave the government 10 days to release him or grant him a new deportation hearing with a new federal immigration judge.

But in the statement announcing its plan, the department also said that parts of the new hearing may remain closed.

Haddad is currently being held at the Monroe County Jail.

Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan had ordered a new immigration judge for the Lebanon native and Ann Arbor resident. She said the Justice Department classification of the case as "special interest" - which requires closed immigration hearings - biased Immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker against Haddad because the special interest designation is applied only to cases related to the Sept. 11 investigations and thereby suggested Haddad is a threat to national security.

Cases designated as such were to be closed to the public and media, per an order from Attorney General John Ashcroft, but federal courts have since ordered that the hearings be at least partially open.

As it appeals last week's ruling in Haddad v. Ashcroft, the department said in a statement it "believes this order represents an unwarranted intrusion into the administrative immigration process established by Congress and entrusted to the Executive both by statue and the Constitution."

Immigration proceedings are handled in administrative courts within the Justice Department, though decisions can be challenged in the federal judiciary.

The department said it will hold another deportation hearing for Haddad on Sept. 30, although Haddad's lawyer contends the date is actually Oct. 1.

But, the government said, "the Department may seek to close those portions of the hearing where sensitive information will be introduced which could prove valuable to terrorists seeking to harm America."

A group of newspapers, along with U.S.Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) and the American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the department over the past few months, resulting in orders that the hearings be opened to the media and public.

Haddad has been detained since last September for overstaying a six-month visa. The government also raided the offices of the charity he co-founded, Global Relief Foundation, Inc., saying the organization was funding terrorism.

Haddad's attorney, Ashraf Nubani of Springfield, Va., blasted the government for its action yesterday.

"There's been cases that have popped up since Sept. 11 that have presented a challenge to the Justice Department's, through the executive branch, curtailing the rights of people living there and I think Pastor Haddad is a great example of how they've done that," Nubani said, citing the government's use of secret evidence and secret nature of the hearings.

Printed from www.michigandaily.com on Sat, 26 May 2012 19:19:02 -0400