Until the passage of the U.S. Patriot Act in the wake of September 11, it was almost unprecedented for the federal government to ask that immigration hearings be held in secret.

Bensouda was arrested on May 30 by federal officials in Champaign, Illinois, where he had been a student and secular political activist on issues that include Palestinian solidarity work and support for boycott campaigns targeting companies that sell military equipment to Israel. He was subsequently transferred to an INS detention facility in DuPage County, and on Wednesday was brought before immigration judge James Fujimoto in Chicago for a bond hearing in his case.

While Bensouda has ostensibly been held by the INS for a technical visa violation, he has been repeatedly interviewed by both INS and FBI officials, and it remains unclear which federal agency actually arrested him -- and which agency is ultimately pressing to expel the press and public from his hearings. During Bensouda's immigration hearing today, federal officials argued that his case should be closed to the public because of 'national security' concerns and announced that they sought to present secret evidence showing why Bensouda should be denied bond. Federal officials asked that Bensouda's hearings be held 'in camera' -- that is, in secret, in court proceedings closed to the press and public.

Bensouda was brought into court under the auspices of the Special Investigations Unit of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which has asserted that the Bensouda case is a 'special investigations' case. The little-known INS unit is believed to be part of the same INS project that charged for years that Florida resident Mazen Al-Najjar, his brother-in-law Sami Al-Arian and their acquaintances had helped bankroll terrorism. In that case, the government ultimately admitted that it had no evidence to back up those claims and was forced to release Al-Najar, who had been imprisoned for three years while the case wound through court. The government has subsequently rearrested Al-Najar on visa issues, and Al-Arian, a university professor in Florida, has been fired by his school in a closely-watched academic freedom case. Both Al-Najar and Al-Arian have been active in promoting Palestinian rights.

In court today, Bensouda's attorney Jim Fennerty of the National Lawyers' Guild argued that another recent decision in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals set a precedent to keep Bensouda’s hearing open to the press and public. In that case, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a Justice Department request to block U.S. district judge Nancy Edmunds’s ruling that the government must open immigration hearings for detained Lebanese immigrant Rabih Haddad to the press and public. The 6th Circuit panel also ruled that the government must release documents related to Haddad's previous hearings, which had been closed to the press and public at the government’s request.

But Judge Fujimoto rejected that argument, noting that Bensouda's case falls under the purview of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals -- not the 6th -- and that in addition, he is bound by law to enforce new regulations promulgated two weeks ago by the Executive Office of Immigration Review. At that point, observers and Bensouda supporters were then expelled from the court hearing.

Observers believe that the new INS regulations effectively compel Fujimoto to honor the government's request for secrecy, at least for the forseeable future, and handle Bensouda’s case in camera -- outside of public scrutiny -- if the government so requests.

"It is my belief that Judge Fujimoto's hands have been effectively tied for the time being," said Fennerty. "We're going to have to mount a comprehensive legal strategy that both challenges these new rules and that supports the right to open immigration hearings in the 7th Circuit."

The Chicago Immigration Court falls under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, which is a component of the Executive Office for Immigration Review under the Department of Justice. Observers note that, within the federal judicial system, the 7th Circuit has tended to give Justice Department officials sweeping preference in specific requests related to cases where the government invokes the mantra of 'terrorism.'

Bensouda’s next hearing is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Friday, June 21, at the INS’s basement courtroom, located at 10 W. Jackson in downtown Chicago.

Bensouda's supporters believe that he has been targeted by the federal government for his political activism.

"Once again, the government is attempting to use 'secret' evidence in a case that is clearly politically motivated, despite the fact that the government was rebuked in the 6th Circuit from doing so," says Bill Massey, a member of the Chicago Coalition Against War & Racism who attended today’s hearing. "It seems that the government is dropping a net on as many Palestinian activists as possible through these methods -- which they are literally inventing as they go -- with the blessing of the judicial system."

Bensouda was arrested on the same day that federal authorities arrested another secular Arab student activist, Jaoudat Abouazza, a Palestinian activist with Canadian citizenship who has been working with the Boston ANSWER coalition. Cambridge police stopped and arrested Abouazza and then turned him over to FBI officials, who in their interrogation continually probed about Abouazza's possible support of 'terrorism,' an allegation his supporters say is completely false. Abouazza remains in 'detention' -- what is effectively an open-ended state of imprisonment -- for technical immigration violations.

Boston Indymedia reporter Saurabh Asthana has noted that Abouazza's case is garnering national attention as an example of repression of dissent and the persecution of Arabs and Muslims under the new post-9/11 security regime.

Civil liberties supporters also point to the case of Farouk Abdel Muhti as an example of the federal government's aggressive new strategy to silence activists of Arab dissent in the United States. Abdel Muhti, coordinator of the Palestine Aid Society, a secular relief group based on the east coast, has also been arrested on alleged technical visa violations.

Abdel Muhti is a high-profile political activist in the New York area, and his associates charge that he has been targeted for his work in support of Palestinian human rights. On April 29, Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW reported that three plainclothes New York police officers and an INS agent attempted the previous Friday to enter Abdel-Muhti's Queens apartment without a warrant, claiming they wanted to ask him questions about September 11th and saying they had information that there were explosives in the apartment. When Abdel Muhti's roommate, Bernard McFall, refused to open the door unless the officers produced a warrent, they threatened to break it down.

The attack was the second time Abdel Muhti's apartment had been raided by law enforcement that month. The first time, agents threatened to throw his teenaged son from the window of their 14th floor apartent if he did not tell them where his father was. After Abdel Muhti's arrest, law enforcement authorities told him that if he did not 'cooperate' and provide them with political information about other Arabs, they would activate extradition papers they had been provided by the Israeli Mossad.

"Ahmed Bensouda's arrest is the third case in the last month alone in which a secular political activist involved in the struggle for Palestinian rights has been scooped up for nothing more than technical visa violations -- and, I might add, for actively disagreeing with United States foreign policy in Palestine," said Massey. "The government is aggressively seeking to deny the right to dissent -- and for all intents and purposes, no wall in the right to dissent exists between those who are not citizens and those who are. Today's developments in the Bensouda case threaten all of us very deeply. We have entered a period of political repression more dangerous than that of the McCarthy era or COINTELPRO."

For more information on new detention rules for immigrants, check out analysis on immigrant rights and the Patriot Act by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

For more information on the history of COINTELPRO in the United States, check out the background article by civil rights attorney Mike Cassidy and University of Vermont philosophy professor Will Miller in the Albion Monitor.

For more information on Ahmed Bensouda’s case, check out his supporters’ website, as well as ongoing coverage on the
Urbana/Champaign Indymedia website.