Justice Department asks high court to keep immigration hearings closed
By The Associated Press
06.24.02
NEWARK, N.J. — The Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court on June 21 to keep immigration hearings for terrorism suspects closed by staying a judge's ruling that the hearings are presumed to be open.
A similar request by the department was rejected on June 17 by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The appeals court agreed to the government's request for an expedited appeal, meaning it could hear arguments in several months, but it refused to stay the ruling by a Newark, N.J., federal judge.
The requests stem from a May 29 ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge John W. Bissell that dealt a blow to the government's effort to secretly detain foreigners swept up in its terrorism investigation.
In that opinion, Bissell barred the government from enforcing a blanket policy on secret deportation hearings, saying it was unconstitutional.
Such hearings may only be closed on a case-by-case basis by the immigration judge conducting the proceeding, Bissell ruled in granting a preliminary injunction requested by civil rights groups and two newspapers.
Bissell said the government could hold an immigration hearing in secret if it could show that making it public would harm an ongoing terrorism investigation.
In a Sept. 21, 2001, memorandum, the nation's chief immigration judge, Michael Creppy, directed immigration judges to close hearings involving detainees whose cases have been designated of "special interest" to the FBI. The memo also prohibited court administrators from listing the cases on dockets or confirming when hearings are to be held.
The Justice Department maintains that public disclosure would compromise national security.
News media organizations around the country have filed suits to reopen the proceedings. Civil rights groups have said the government's attempts to close all hearings — even those unrelated to terrorism — violate immigrants' rights to an open court process.
In New Jersey, Bissell acted on a lawsuit filed March 6 by the Newark chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based Center For Constitutional Rights on behalf of the New Jersey Law Journal, a weekly publication, and North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the Herald News of West Paterson, a daily newspaper.
The newspapers' reporters tried to cover court hearings involving detainees but were barred from courtrooms, along with the rest of the public.