U.S. Resident Indefinitely Detained Without Charge Secures His Day In Court
Adham Hassoun will finally have his day in court. A federal judge has rejected the government’s sweeping claim that it can, on its own say-so, indefinitely imprison him without charge and without a fair trial.
Adham is a long-time U.S. resident and a father of three. As we previously explained, Adham completed his criminal sentence and was set to be released from prison almost three years ago. But the government — claiming unprecedented and unconstitutional powers — is seeking to keep him locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, based on executive fiat.
Adham is challenging his unconstitutional detention in court. We're representing Adham together with the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Clinical Legal Education Program of the University at Buffalo School of Law, and the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic University of Chicago Law School.
In December, the district court rejected one of the government’s two justifications for detaining Adham. The government argued that, under a rarely-used administrative regulation, it could unilaterally declare Adham a danger to national security and deny him the basic rudiments of due process. The government claimed Adham had no chance to contest the accusations against him before a judge, and said he instead had to prove his innocence to the very people trying to keep him imprisoned. In its ruling, the court rightfully recognized that depriving a person of liberty through such a flimsy and one-sided process raises serious constitutional problems, and declared the regulation “a legal nullity.”
The court also rejected the government’s second argument — that it could detain Adham under a never-before used provision of the USA Patriot Act without first affording him a judicial hearing. Normally, even when individuals are ordered removed under immigration laws, the government can’t continue detaining them unless it will actually be able to remove them in the foreseeable future. A judge has already ruled that Adham’s removal isn’t foreseeable because there is no country he can be sent to, but instead of releasing him — as our Constitution and values require — the government has opted to keep him locked up based on an assertion that he’s dangerous. According to the government, the Patriot Act allows the executive branch to keep a supposedly “dangerous” person behind bars forever, no matter how flimsy the evidence against him, with no significant review by a judge.
As we argued to the court, the government cannot use the Patriot Act to circumvent Adham’s constitutional rights. If the government has reason to detain Adham, it must charge him with a crime or at least present its evidence before a court and give Adham an opportunity to mount a defense — as the Constitution demands.
In a win for constitutional rights, the judge has ordered that Adham at minimum be given a fair hearing, which is scheduled for April 28. There, the government will be required to prove to the court that Adham’s detention is justified. It will also need to convince the judge that the flimsy evidence it allegedly has against Adham meets the rigorous clear and convincing evidence standard, which properly places a significant onus on the government to strip a person of his or her liberty. The judge already expressed skepticism of any evidence relying on anonymous hearsay — that is, information a witness does not have personal knowledge of, including things they heard second- and third-hand from others.
Additionally, the court rejected the government’s plea to hold the hearing at the federal detention center in Batavia, New York, where Adham is imprisoned and where public access could be restricted. Instead, the court said the hearing will be at a federal courthouse in Buffalo, New York, noting that “[o]ne of the strongest pillars of our system of justice in the United States is the presumption that all judicial proceedings are open to the public whom the judiciary serves.”
Adham is getting his long-awaited day in court. We’ll be there to hold the government to its burden, and to defend his — and our — right to liberty.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
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Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.