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On Aug. 26, US immigration officials tried to deport detainee
Salim Yassir, a stateless Palestinian without travel documents.
Officials sought to put Yassir on a cargo ship docked at the Port
of Baltimore, set to depart for Britain on Aug. 27. After the US
Coast Guard told the Wallenius Lines shipping company what was
happening, attorneys for the company blocked the plan, fearing
Yassir would be stuck on the ship if British officials denied him
entry.
Yassir was born in Gaza and moved to a refugee camp in Libya at
age 10. He briefly lived in Syria and England before arriving in
New Jersey as a stowaway on a Wallenius Lines ship in 2000. He
has been held ever since at the immigration detention center in
Elizabeth, New Jersey. On Aug. 9 the Third Circuit Court of
Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that Yassir had established his
identity, and sent his habeas case back to the district court for
a new hearing, now set for Sept. 13. The district court had ruled
that the government could not release Yassir because it couldn’t
confirm his identity. “The government was out of options,” said
Yassir’s attorney, Joshua Bardavid. “They had to go to a judge
and get a final ruling in the case. So instead of releasing him,
they try to take him in the middle of the night and put him on a
ship.”
In June 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in Zadvydas v. Davis that
immigrants ordered deported should not be held over 180 days
while authorities seek their removal; later this year the court
is to decide, in Benitez v. Mata, whether this principle applies
to people deemed “inadmissable” upon arrival. The government will
not say how many detainees have been held over 180 days following
a final removal order. In January 2004 the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) released a list of 128 such detainees; when
attorneys in the Detention Watch Network checked the list, they
found at least 84 of their clients in this category were
unlisted. [Star Ledger (Newark, NJ) 8/28/04; AP 8/28/04]
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