Advocates for Haitians Push for Justification of Detention Policy

[struggle4progress]

Published Saturday, May 28, 2005

By CURT ANDERSON
The Associated Press

MIAMI -- Haitian advocates told a federal judge Friday the U.S. government is not being responsive to their efforts to determine whether the Bush administration had evidence to invoke terrorism fears in justifying the indefinite detention, without bail, of Haitian migrants.

The Florida Immigration Advocacy Center is suing the government for documents to back up a decision by former Attorney General John Ashcroft in April 2003 that implied terrorists from the Middle East and Pakistan might use Haiti as a "staging point" to infiltrate the United States.

The decision to change immigration policy and detain Haitian asylum seekers on national security grounds came after a crowded wooden boat containing more than 200 undocumented Haitians and Dominicans came ashore on Key Biscayne in October 2002, under live television coverage.

Requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act with five U.S. government agencies have thus far produced no public documents containing evidence of terrorists "disguised as Haitian boat people," said advocacy center lawyer Carl Goldfarb. <snip>

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050528/NEWS/505280430/1004

[peacetalksforall]

1. This country and some people around the world are going through hell

because of this administration. Eight years of this is enough to cause eight decades of mending. The reach of the menace from the PNAC group is amazing. PNAC and the Fed Socieity and their octupusi tentacles - we must expose them. Not enough people know what's going on.