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Immigration News Briefs
Vol. 8, No. 6 – February 5, 2005
On Jan. 11 Marie O’Rourke, assistant director of the Executive
Office for US Attorneys, informed the civil rights group People
for the American Way (PFAW) that the Department of Justice (DOJ)
would charge “approximately $372,799” to search for records the
group is seeking. PFAW filed its Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request in November 2003 for records involving “any
request by the government to seal the proceedings of a case in
any federal court arising from or relating to the detention of a
post 9/11 immigrant detainee.”
An “initial canvass of our 93 districts led to an estimate search
time of 13,314.25 hours,” billed at $28 an hour, O’Rourke told
PFAW general counsel Elliot Mincberg in a letter–adding that the
estimate could rise with the possible addition of “hundreds of
hours” more in search time for the Southern Florida district and
four other districts.
The letter came two days before the government was due to explain
to a federal court in Washington why PFAW’s lawsuit against the
DOJ should be summarily denied. PFAW sued last Aug. 23 after the
government first refused to release any records–citing federal
privacy exemptions–then denied an appeal. PFAW has until Feb. 10
to respond to the fee letter. The DOJ lawyers have asked US
District Judge John Bates to hold a hearing the week of Mar. 14.
PFAW hopes to produce a public report about government secrecy
efforts against hundreds of unidentified detainees–including
Algerian-born Florida restaurant waiter Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel,
detained in October 2001 for overstaying his student visa after
the FBI claimed he had served food to some of the men involved in
the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Bellahouel filed a habeas
corpus petition (M.K.B. v. Warden) in January 2002 in the
Southern District of Florida; his case was kept secret and off
the court dockets on orders of US District Judge Paul Huck.
Bellahouel was freed around March 1, 2002, but continued to press
his habeas case in an attempt to challenge the secrecy order.
Bellahouel’s name was discovered and made public by the Daily
Business Review of Miami only because of a March 2003 clerk error
at the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta [see INB
1/3/04]. [Daily Business Review 1/31/05]
Immigration News Briefs (INB), a weekly English-language summary of US
immigration news, is forwarded out to the email list of the Coalition for
the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI). If you receive INB as a forwarded
message, and you wish to subscribe directly to INB, or to the CHRI email
list (which includes INB and local NYC area events, average 4-5 messages a
week), write to nicajg@panix.com (indicate “CHRI list” or “INB only”).
