The Bogus Congressional "Debate" On The Patriot Act

[Itsthetruth]

The Nation
May 30, 2005 Issue

The Missing Patriot Debate
David Cole

To begin to understand just how limited the Patriot Act debate is, consider that the sixteen provisions at issue probably take up no more than twenty-five of the original act's 342 pages. Most of those sixteen provisions are now considered "noncontroversial," and are virtually certain to be reauthorized. The real battles are likely to focus on just two sections. One, popularly known as the "libraries provision," allows the government secretly to obtain records of any person from any business, regardless of wrongdoing; and the other authorizes secret "sneak and peek" searches of homes without promptly informing the homeowner. These two measures undoubtedly raise real concerns, but they hardly warrant the kind of mass rallying that both sides have mustered since the Patriot Act was passed.

Patriot Act proponents often insist that there have been no abuses of the act, but the law's immigration provisions have clearly been abused. In one case, the government ordered an Indian man deported for having set up a tent for religious prayer and food, simply because unnamed members of a "terrorist organization" were allegedly among those who came to services at the tent. In a case I am handling for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the government is seeking to deport two longtime permanent residents for having distributed PLO magazines in Los Angeles in the 1980s, and for having organized two Palestinian community dinners at which they raised money for humanitarian causes. The government considers it irrelevant that distributing magazines and raising humanitarian aid was entirely lawful, even constitutionally protected, at the time.

Not only are these aspects of the Patriot Act not subject to debate, but Congress has just passed still more onerous immigration provisions as part of the Iraq War appropriations bill. This legislation makes the Patriot Act look humane. It makes deportable any foreign national who ever joined or made a donation to any organization of two or more people that ever used or threatened to use a weapon. It is no defense to prove that one's support or membership was not intended to further terrorism or violence. This law would retroactively make deportable every foreign national who ever donated to the African National Congress, the Israeli military, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, the Nicaraguan contras or the Irish Republican Army. It would fully resurrect the "guilt by association" approach of the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. So, far from checking abuse of the immigration power, Congress has done its best to encourage it still further.

Also not up for reconsideration is a Patriot Act section that authorizes the Treasury Secretary to freeze the assets of any entity in the United States without evidence of wrongdoing, simply by claiming that it is "under investigation" for potential violations of a law barring material support to groups or individuals designated as "terrorist," a term not defined in the law, meaning it is whatever the Treasury Department says it is. The same provision also says that if an entity challenges a freeze order in court, the government can defend it by presenting secret evidence to the judge behind closed doors. So the Patriot Act imposes guilt by association, punishes speech, authorizes the use of secret evidence and allows detention without charges--yet none of that will be subject to the Patriot Act debates.

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[TheFarseer]

1. Here's a popular conservative line:

"Do you know how many times library records have been examined? zero!" Oh is that a fact? How do you know? Are you blindly believeing the same people who were SURE there were WMDs in Iraq? Second of all, if they aren't using this power, why do they need it? Maybe we should give them to power to enslave our children as long as they promise not to ever use it.