Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Suzanne Ito, ACLU
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Posts by Suzanne Ito, ACLU
Why Deny Kerim Yildiz a Visa?
04 months ago
Today’s New York Times story put a spotlight on that question. In "Advocate’s Visa Delay Stirs Questions," Kirk Semple writes of the case of Kerim Yildiz, who we blogged about earlier this month.
Semple writes:
Kerim Yildiz, a leading human rights advocate for the Kurdish people, was for two decades a frequent visitor to the United States. A British citizen living in London, he regularly lectured at American universities, caucused with other human rights advocates and briefed government officials in Washington.
But something changed. Where before he was admitted to the country without a problem, he has now waited nearly a year for the Obama administration to approve a visa. Officials have not explained the delay to him.
In letters we sent last month to the Departments of State and Homeland Security asking them to grant Yildiz a visa, we note the government practice known as ideological exclusion, in which foreign nationals are denied entry to the United States because our government does not agree with their political views. Ideological exclusion violates Americans’ First Amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech by denying foreign scholars, artists, politicians and others entry to the U.S.
Learn more about ideological exclusion: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
ACLU Lens: American Citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi Killed Without Judicial Process
04 months ago
Today in Yemen, U.S. air strikes killed American citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi. Al-Aulaqi has never been charged with a crime. Last year, the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights represented Al-Aulaqi’s father in a lawsuit challenging the government’s asserted authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone. We argued that such killings violate the Constitution and international law, but the case was dismissed in federal court last December.
In response to today’s killing of Al-Aulaqi, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said:
The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law. As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts. The government’s authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific, and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the President — any President — with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country.
In a hearing before a federal court last November, government lawyers argued the president should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans he has unilaterally determined to pose a threat. As National Security Project Litigation Director Ben Wizner added today: "If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the President does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state."
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In the News:
- New York Times: U.S.-Born Qaeda Leader Killed in Yemen
- Time.com: Anwar al-Awlaki Killed By Same Unit That Took Down Osama bin Laden
- The Hill Blog: Ron Paul criticizes Obama for drone killing of Awlaki
- Wired.com: Qaida’s YouTube Preacher Is Killed In Yemen
Learn more about targeted killing: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Banned Books Week Kicks Off Tomorrow!
04 months ago
Earlier this week, Reuters reported that a school district in Missouri agreed to lift its ban on Slaughterhouse-Five and Twenty Boy Summer, two books the district had completely banned from its libraries. Thanks to a coalition of censorship opponents, the books are again available in Republic R-III School District libraries, but must be checked out from a "secure area" of the library by a parent or guardian.
The books were first banned in July, after Republic resident Wesley Scroggins — who, incidentally, does not have children attending school in the district — sent a multipage letter to the school board outlining his religious objections to three books: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer. The Springfield News-Leader also published an op-ed by Scroggins last September: "Filthy Books Demeaning to Republic Education." The district responded to his complaints by banning the works by Vonnegut and Ockler.
A coalition including the ACLU of Kansas/Western Missouri, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the PEN American Center sent a letter to Republic School Distrcit superintendent Vern Minor objecting to this censorship in August. In addition, the ACLU of Kansas/Western Missouri filed a public records act request seeking more information about the policy that dictated the books’ banning earlier this month. Community members also voiced their objections to the book bans at school board meetings.
The school board voted to reverse the ban at a school board meeting Monday. The ACLU of Kansas/Western Missouri will continue to review the district’s policies on rating, restricting, and removing books in the school district’s libraries to determine whether those policies and actions comply with the First Amendment.
This is progress, but it’s also a stark reminder of the ongoing threats to artistic censorship and the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
Saturday marks the start of Banned Books Week, an annual event that celebrates the First Amendment and the freedom to read. New this year is Banned Sites Day on Wednesday, September 28. Banned Sites Day will raise awareness of the growing threat of internet filters to students’ free speech rights. (The ACLU has been very active fighting censorship via internet filters with its "Don’t Filter Me!" campaign.) As the American Library Association points out on its Banned Sites Awareness Day page:
Filtering websites does the next generation of digital citizens a disservice. Students must develop skills to evaluate information from all types of sources in multiple formats, including the Internet. Relying solely on filters does not teach young citizens how to be savvy searchers or how to evaluate the accuracy of information.
Of course, we at the ACLU heart Banned Books Week. ACLU affiliates across the country, from Connecticut to Texas, are celebrating the freedom to read with an array of events, from readings, to panel discussions, to parties. Check out a comprehensive list of ACLU events in your state here.
We hope you’ll join us next week: Read a banned book or browse a banned site (here’s one of our faves), and let’s celebrate the First Amendment!
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Supreme Court Stays Duane Buck Execution
04 months ago
Great news! Last night, the Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay to Duane Buck, who was hours away from his scheduled execution in Texas. We now await a decision from the court as to whether it will review his case, and the claims that race played an improper role in his death sentence.
We think it’s pretty clear that it did. The ACLU’s Brian Stull blogged earlier this month about this case:
In Texas, imposing the death penalty in capital cases comes down to one question: is the defendant going to be a "future danger" if he or she is not executed? Mr. Buck was sentenced to die based on testimony by Dr. Walter Quijano, who told jurors that Mr. Buck was more likely to pose a future danger to society because he is black. Dr. Quijano’s testimony came in 1997, more than 20 years after Texas promised the Supreme Court that "no correlation exists between the race/ethnic background of a defendant and the probability that he will be either convicted of capital murder or given the death penalty."
Buck’s attorney, Kate Black of the Texas Defender Service, said in a statement last night:
"We are relieved that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the obvious injustice of allowing a defendant’s race to factor into sentencing decisions and granted a stay of execution to Duane Buck. No one should be put to death based on the color of his or her skin. We are confident that the Court will agree that our client is entitled to a fair sentencing hearing that is untainted by considerations of his race."
Thank you to everyone who took action and sent a message to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry. We hope the Supreme Court will grant Duane Buck a new sentencing hearing. As Linda Geffin, who helped prosecute Buck in his 1997 trial wrote to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles last Friday: "No individual should be executed without being afforded a fair trial, untainted by considerations of race."
Learn more about the death penalty: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Ideological Exclusion Again?
04 months ago
Today, the ACLU sent letters to the Departments of State and Homeland Security asking them to grant a visa to Kerim Yildiz, a British citizen living in London. Yildiz, the executive director of the U.K.-based Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), has apparently been refused a visa to enter the U.S., and we worry that the delay — which has lasted nearly a year — relates to his human rights advocacy on behalf of Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere.
We’ve previously noted the practice of ideological exclusion, in which foreign nationals are denied entry to the United States because our government does not agree with their political views.
The ACLU has opposed this policy for years: we’ve brought lawsuits on behalf of Professor Tariq Ramadan and Professor Adam Habib, and we’ve sent letters to the State Department expressing our concern over the apparently exclusion of women’s rights activist Malalai Joya and journalist Hollman Morris. As we’ve noted in our lawsuits and letters, ideological exclusion infringes the First Amendment rights of Americans who would like to meet with these individuals, hear their views and engage them in debate. All four of these individuals have been allowed inside the U.S. since we first challenged their exclusions.
In Yildiz’s case, he has been invited to the United States by, among others, the Open Society Foundations and the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, which recently gave Mr. Yildiz’s organization its prestigious Justice Award.
Learn more about ideological exclusion by checking out this timeline of others who have been excluded in the past.
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Your Privacy Rights, Before Congress Now and the Supreme Court in November
04 months ago
In June, we told you the Supreme Court agreed to hear United States v. Jones, a case that will determine if the government may plant GPS devices on vehicles to track people without a warrant. The government has appealed the D.C. appellate court’s August 2010 decision that such 24-7 surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment. The argument is scheduled for November 8.
On Monday, Jeffrey Rosen wrote in the New York Times how the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones is likely to have a significant impact on Americans’ ability to protect their anonymity.
But while Rosen properly identifies online and video surveillance and facial recognition technology as new and serious threats to our privacy, the privacy rights of 91 percent of Americans who carry cell phones are also very much in jeopardy. After all, your cell phone can give the government or law enforcement the same kind of location information that was gleaned from the GPS device in question in the Jones case; the location information the D.C. Circuit said was protected by the Constitution.
The ACLU wants to know exactly how location tracking information is currently used in law enforcement investigations, so we launched a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign. ACLU affiliates in 31 states across the country filed more than 375 public information act requests with local law enforcement agencies seeking info about when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans.
While we put together a picture of how this information is used, the law governing warrantless location tracking clearly needs to be updated and overhauled. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) have proposed a solution: they’ve introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act in the Senate and House, respectively, which requires law enforcement to get a warrant based on probable cause before accessing location information.
These bills need cosponsors, so contact your members of Congress! We don’t have to wait for the Supreme Court to deliver its decision in Jones next year when we can act now.
Learn more about location tracking: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
ACLU’s Anthony Romero Discusses Police Brutality in Puerto Rico on NPR
04 months ago
Today, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about last week’s release of a Justice Department investigation excoriating the Puerto Rican police for civil rights violations, corruption and illegal conduct. Listen to it here, and learn more about the issue by checking out our Lens and hub page.
ACLU Lens: Justice Department Report Accuses Puerto Rico Police of Abuse, Corruption and Illegal Conduct
05 months ago
Today, the New York Times reports that a Justice Department investigation has accused the Puerto Rico Police Department of widespread civil rights violations, corruption and illegal conduct.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero responded to today’s story:
The report confirms a breathtaking level of violence and corruption throughout the PRPD. With the facts laid bare, it is now the responsibility of the Puerto Rican government and the Justice Department to make sure the police abuse and brutality end as quickly as possible.
Calling the report "a blistering condemnation of the second-largest police force in the United States," the Times notes:
The Justice Department began the investigation in part due to complaints by the American Civil Liberties Union. In June, when President Obama visited the island, the A.C.L.U. sent him a letter contending that the police had “engaged in a level of brutality against U.S. citizens” with a degree of impunity that “would not be tolerated in the 50 states.”
Since 2004, the ACLU of Puerto Rico has documented numerous incidents of serious police misconduct. These incidents have increased both in their frequency and intensity since 2008, at which time the Department of Justice opened an investigation in response to our complaints.
Most recently, in March-May 2011 the national office of the ACLU conducted fact-finding research in Puerto Rico, and in May 2011 convened a high-level delegation that went on a two-day fact-finding mission to further research the rise in police brutality in the Commonwealth.
To coincide with President Obama’s visit to the island in June, in addition to the letter, the ACLU ran this ad in the major daily papers urging him to address these issues.
In July, the ACLU participated in a congressional briefing to discuss preliminary findings from our fact-finding research. A final report of our findings will be released this fall.
In the News:
- New York Times: Police in Puerto Rico Are Accused of Abuses in Justice Dept. Report
- CNN: Justice Department report blasts Puerto Rico police
Learn more about police brutality and free speech: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Censoring Military Personnel Is Un-American
05 months ago
Today, the ACLU filed a brief in a case on behalf of Col. Morris Davis, who was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for publicly criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Guantánamo detainees in federal courts and some in the military commissions system.
Col. Davis is a decorated veteran of the United States Air Force. From 2005 to 2007, he served as the Chief Prosecutor for the Department of Defense’s Office of Military Commissions, which was created to prosecute suspected terrorists being held at Guantánamo. He resigned from that position in October 2007 because he came to believe that the military commission system had become fundamentally flawed, and has openly and publicly criticized the commissions ever since.
In 2008, Col. Davis began working as the Assistant Director of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division at CRS. His work at CRS had nothing to do with Guantánamothe military commissions, and in fact, CRS was fully aware of his previous public criticism of the military commissions when he was hired.
Despite this, CRS fired Col. Davis after the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post published opinions he authored expressing his views about the military commissions. Immediately after these opinions were published, Davis was informed that his employment would be terminated because of the pieces.
In December 2009, we sent CRS a letter informing it that by firing Col. Davis, it had violated his First Amendment right to speak, as a private citizen, about issues that have nothing to do with his job there. We informed CRS that if they did not reinstate Col. Davis, we would sue.
They refused to reinstate Col. Davis, so we sued. The defendants in the case, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and former CRS Director Daniel P. Mulhollan, asked a district court to dismiss the case. That court refused. Mulhollan is currently appealing that decision to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief we filed today opposes that appeal.
This country’s handling of detainees in the so-called "war on terror" is an issue of great public concern, and few have the experience and authority to speak on this issue as Col. Davis. Firing him for stating an opinion is unconstitutional and un-American. We hope the appeals court agrees.
Learn more about free speech: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Censoring Military Personnel Is Un-American
05 months ago
Today, the ACLU filed a brief in a case on behalf of Col. Morris Davis, who was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for publicly criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Guantánamo detainees in federal courts and some in the military commissions system.
Col. Davis is a decorated veteran of the United States Air Force. From 2005 to 2007, he served as the Chief Prosecutor for the Department of Defense’s Office of Military Commissions, which was created to prosecute suspected terrorists being held at Guantánamo. He resigned from that position in October 2007 because he came to believe that the military commission system had become fundamentally flawed, and has openly and publicly criticized the commissions ever since.
In 2008, Col. Davis began working as the Assistant Director of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division at CRS. His work at CRS had nothing to do with Guantánamo or the military commissions, and in fact, CRS was fully aware of his previous public criticism of the military commissions when he was hired.
Despite this, CRS fired Col. Davis after the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post published opinions he authored expressing his views about the military commissions. Immediately after these opinions were published, Davis was informed that his employment would be terminated because of the pieces.
In December 2009, we sent CRS a letter informing it that by firing Col. Davis, it had violated his First Amendment right to speak, as a private citizen, about issues that have nothing to do with his job there. We informed CRS that if they did not reinstate Col. Davis, we would sue.
They refused to reinstate Col. Davis, so we sued. The defendants in the case, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and former CRS Director Daniel P. Mulhollan, asked a district court to dismiss the case. That court refused. Mulhollan is currently appealing that decision to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief we filed today opposes that appeal.
This country’s handling of detainees in the so-called "war on terror" is an issue of great public concern, and few have the experience and authority to speak on this issue as Col. Davis. Firing him for stating an opinion is unconstitutional and un-American. We hope the appeals court agrees.
Learn more about free speech: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.