Jackson Free Press

It wasn't much of a Juneteenth celebration, but the Mississippi ACLU and the Mississippi Green Party (which can, at times, appear to be one person—activist Landon Huey), sponsored a Freedom Forum at the temporary city hall downtown in honor of the holiday that celebrates African-American freedom from slavery. The forum itself held the interest of the not-quite-scores of people in attendance, with a presentation and discussion regarding the USA PATRIOT Act, the current Department of Justice and the potential dangers posed to civil liberties.

Mississippi civil rights attorney Rob McDuff began the presentation by discussing civil liberties since Sept. 11, 2001, in a broad sense. "Not since World War II have we rounded up so many people," said McDuff, pointing out the total number may have reached 1,200. While most of these people have been released or deported by now, McDuff pointed out that not a single of these detainees was charged with terrorism. He painted a history of times when the U.S. has allowed detentions and a contraction of civil liberties—the Palmer Raids of 1919, the Japanese internment of WWII, the Red Scare—followed by years or decades of apologies, reparations and improvements.

According to a study released by the Justice Department's inspector general in June, immigration violators swept up in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks might well be included in that former category. Detainees were not treated as humanely or as carefully as they should have been, and those arrested for incidental immigration violations were not sufficiently differentiated from those suspected of terror connections. Some detainees were unable to learn the charges against them for over a month, which meant they were held during that time without access to an attorney and without the ability to request a bond hearing. The INS' stated goal is a 72-hour time limit for notifying an arrestee of the charges against him.

Detainees who were held because the FBI believed they had some connection to the terrorism investigation were incarcerated for an average of 80 days while the FBI cleared them. This process was supposed to go more quickly, but clearing the detainees was not made a significant enough priority within the FBI, according to the inspector general.

Perhaps most disturbing are the conditions in which they were held. Eighty-four detainees—the best guesses that the FBI had for terror suspects—were held aa the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., in "lock down" conditions, according to the report. That meant 23 hours a day of confinement, four-point handcuffs, leg irons and heavy chains, one call to an attorney per week (that included calls to find an attorney, and the pro bono list was found to be inaccurate) and one visitor per month. At MDC, the inspector general found a pattern of physical and verbal abuse, as well as 24-hour lighting in cells.

Law student Barry Gerhars, who is interning with McDuff, presented a discussion on the USA PATRIOT Act itself, focusing on the broadened powers that were granted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, a secret court to which the Department of Justice can go for surveillance requests. The USA PATRIOT Act changed the legal mandate of that court so that instead of requiring that the investigation be solely a matter of foreign intelligence (which it was when the court was created in 1978), that now only needs to be a "significant purpose" of the investigation. Civil libertarians see this as an alarming loophole that enables the federal government to get around the Fourth Amendment, as such surveillance or even a search can be undertaken with a warrant being issued or the individual under surveillance ever being told.

Later, Huey stood up to point out that municipalities around the country have begun drafting resolutions—and even legislation—against the PATRIOT Act. In more than 100 small towns and cities, councils have directed their police forces not to comply with PATRIOT Act requests that could be considered unconstitutional. For instance, in late May the Vermont Legislature passed a resolution to protect individual rights as regards their library and bookseller records; the state of Hawaii passed a resolution instructing law enforcement to uphold civil liberties. According to the ACLU, 130