LOS ANGELES, Dec 22, Reuter: Ina ruling hailed as the most important free speech decision in 20 years, a U.S. Judge ruled on Thursday that parts of a law allowing the deportation of aliens for ideological reasons were unconstitutional.
Judge Stephen Wilson said the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union hinged on a “dire conflict” between the government’s power over immigration matters and an immigrant’s right to freedom of speech.
Ruling in favor of the ACLU, he argued that immigrants had the same first amendment rights as US. Citizens “once an alien lawfully enters (the United States), he becomes vested with the rights guaranteed in the constitution,” he said.
Justice Department Attorney Michael Lindeman said the ruling would be appealed.
The ACLU brought the case on behalf of seven Palestinians and a Kenyan woman who were arrested in 1986 and accused of advocating international communism.
This is a deportable offence ‘under a law enacted’ in 1952, at the height of the anticommunist witch hunt led by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Prosecutors charged they were a threat to National Security because they allegedly belonging to a left wing faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
After the eight were briefly detained in federal prison, the charges were changed to unlawful property destruction under the law and lesser visa violations.
Wilson also struck down parts of a 1987 law allowing deportation of PLO members who speak out in support of their causes.
David Cole, a Lawyer for the center for constitutional rights, said the ruling was the most important free speech case since one in 1968 which barred punishment of citizens who advocate terrorism unless it could be proved they provoked “immediate lawless action.”
Khader Hamide, one of the seven Palestinians, said: “Now we can speak our minds freely without’ fear of deportation or being put in jail.”
Article extracted from this publication >> December 30, 1988
