Today the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) released a report analyzing claims made by family members of civilians killed by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Called “Adding Insult to Injury: US Military Claims System for Civilians,” the report is based on documents that the ACLU obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and made public in April 2007 and searchable on our website. The documents provide first-hand accounts of civilian deaths from the perspective of family members. Although these files are deeply disturbing to read, they allow us to provide the public with the information to understand the human cost of war that other outlets simply have not. We believe that Americans have a right to unfiltered and complete information about the victims of war.

We filed our FOIA request because the human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remain cloaked from public view, which is the way the Bush administration likes it. The government has banned photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of soldiers killed overseas and paid Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort. It has invited U.S. journalists to “embed” with military units but requires them to submit their stories to the military for pre-publication review — a policy which according to some reports, co-opts the embedded journalists and makes independent and objective reporting more difficult. The military also refuses to disclose statistics on civilian casualties, and has erased journalists’ footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The FOIA documents help to close the gap between the information that we receive from the news media and the reality of the wars.

CIVIC has expertise in civilian death compensation programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its report analyzes the documents and draws conclusions and recommendations based on its expertise.

This enlightening use of our documents highlights the power and importance of Freedom of Information Act requests as a vital tool of democracy, and we hope that more individuals and organizations will follow CIVIC’s example.

Sameh Khouzam is an Egyptian who fled Egypt in 1998 to avoid torture for being a Coptic Christian. He was detained upon his arrival and jailed in U.S. prisons for eight years. In 2004, he won a "deferral of removal" under the Convention Against Torture to prevent his deportation, and was finally released from prison in 2006. He’s been living and working in Pennsylvania since then.

But earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security informed Sameh that they’ve revoked his deferral, and he’ll be deported back to Egypt, where he’ll almost certainly be tortured for his religious beliefs, tomorrow, Friday, June 1.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania is asking all Pennsylvania state residents to call Senators Specter and Casey and Representatives Pitts and Platts this afternoon to intervene on Sameh’s behalf and stop his deportation.

UPDATE: Sameh has received a stay until June 7. Please keep up the pressure on your representatives to stop his deportation.

After the recent and startling testimony by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, detailing the internal conflicts within the Department of Justice itself over the legality of President Bush’s illegal NSA spying program, we’ve renewed our call for the release of the documents and records pertaining to the program. The case is currently pending before the Honorable Judge Henry H. Kennedy of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

We first filed Freedom of Information Act requests for these documents within days of the December 2005 reports that President Bush had repeatedly authorized illegal surveillance of Americans. The ACLU also filed a challenge to the surveillance program itself, which we won in federal court and is now awaiting a decision on the government’s appeal. The National Security Archive and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed similar FOIA requests. But our requests were basically ignored until we filed lawsuits later that winter to enforce our rights under the FOIA.

We believe that if we could look at the documents and records underlying the surveillance program that we could add some needed clarity to the dialogue. And the government is obligated to provide these documents and records under the FOIA unless it can show that we are not entitled to them under a limited number of narrow exceptions to the FOIA.

The government’s response to our FOIA requests and lawsuits has been astonishing. Their initial steps were to give us documents already in the public domain and tell us that the rest was secret: so secret, in fact, that the government would not even describe the individual documents (which it is required to do), tell us how many documents or records were at issue, or how long each of those documents was. But if the surveillance program was so secret then why was it discussed openly when it suited the administration? It seems clear that the Bush administration is using national security as a pretext to hide evidence of unlawful activity.

The public debate over the Bush administration’s illegal actions has raged unabated since late 2005. For its part, the Bush administration has responded with a full-fledged public relations campaign to convince the public that warrantless surveillance is okay. President Bush has publicly acknowledged, described and defended the surveillance program. As have Vice-President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and many other administration officials.

We’ve previously asked the Court to review the documents itself, in closed chambers, and decide for itself whether the government should be able to conceal information the public needs to understand and evaluate the Administration’s program. It is time for the Bush administration to come clean. The issues are staggering in scope and importance. The President had authorized spying on Americans without judicial oversight and in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that explicitly requires judicial oversight. We, along with the rest of America, want answers.

By now you’ve heard of the deal cut between Senators Kennedy, Kyl, McCain and others to try and push through comprehensive immigration reform this year. The White House is also supporting the “compromise” deal.

While language has not been finalized for large parts of the bill, we do know that some of the worst proposals from last year’s immigration debate did not make it in this time around , including expanding expedited removal and the wrongly named Fairness in Immigration Litigation Act.

But the bill does contain a lot of really bad provisions that undermine American values and the Constitution. Almost all judicial review of any DHS errors in reviewing a person’s immigration status would be eliminated or greatly limited. Further, the Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) would require every person in America to carry a hardened Social Security card containing biometric information (such as fingerprints, retina scan and DNA) about the cardholder , essentially a national ID, and present a Real ID-compliant driver’s license to get any new job.

EEVS also creates a vast federal database to verify the work eligibility of all job applicants in America , including U.S. citizens. The system would contain extraordinary amounts of personal information on everyone who seeks or holds a job, all of it keyed to a person’s Social Security number. If this bill passes, we will all have our eligibility to work in the U.S. approved by the Department of Homeland Security every time we apply for a job. If you think looking for work is hard now, just wait until you are stuck in a DHS bureaucratic nightmare trying to get that little holiday second retail gig or become a schoolteacher in the town you’ve lived in all your life. No one will be able to work in the U.S. without DHS approval. And, if DHS makes a mistake, you’ll have virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages because the bill essentially forecloses judicial review of government errors.

Certain triggers will have to be met before immigrants are able to apply for permanent residency, such as the completion of a mandatory detention system, the hiring of 18,000 new border patrol agents and the construction of 370 miles of border wall.

There is a lot of opposition to this deal coming from both the right and the left, so the chances that the bill will pass remain unclear, but the ACLU is very concerned about the bill. Nancy Pelosi is already saying that changes are going to have to be made to get the bill through the House of Representatives.

The current immigration system is clearly broken, but we must not fall into the trap of seeking immigration reform no matter what the cost. That is why the ACLU is working vigorously to ensure that any comprehensive immigration reform legislation passed by Congress respects due process, protects privacy, and adheres to the values of our country and our Constitution. This “compromise” cannot be allowed to compromise our values.

Today marks the 53rd anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and as we remember the landmark ruling that forever changed the course of public education in the United States, we do so with mixed feelings of celebration and regret. Rejecting the notion of “separate but equal” that had ruled the U.S. for generations, the Brown decision was and remains one of the nation’s clearest calls for justice and racial equality in public education. But decades later, that vision of quality, integrated schools for all children, remains a dream deferred. Too many of our nation’s youth are confined to overcrowded, underfunded schools that are every bit as segregated as in the days before Brown , and in some cases, even more so.

Remembering all that has changed since Brown, and all that has not, the American Civil Liberties Union remains committed to the fight to make the vision expressed in Brown a reality. In Connecticut, we are negotiating a settlement that will help to realize the dream of quality, integrated schools for hundreds more Hartford-area schoolchildren in the years to come. We have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, urging it to uphold the continued use of initiatives that help communities create integrated schools as it considers the constitutionality of voluntary school integration programs that use race as a factor in student assignment. In districts around the country, we are working to end the School to Prison Pipeline , a disturbing national trend in which primarily students of color are pushed out of schools and into the juvenile justice system.

Much has been accomplished since the Court’s 1954 decision in Brown, and much remains to be done. Today and every day forward, we celebrate Brown as a call to action.

The excitement and energy was palpable as people streamed into Cooper Union to attend a public hearing on the rights of migrants. Organized by numerous regional nongovernmental and grassroots organizations on the occasion of the visit of Dr. Bustamante, the hearing intended to provide a space and forum for advocates and affected community members to provide testimonies on issues ranging from detention and deportation, to workplace rights, to anti-immigrant ordinances and post-9/11 human rights violations.

If there was just one thing that the Special Rapporteur and other members of the audience took away from the public hearing, it is likely to have been a recognition of the diversity of issues, experiences and people that fall under the vague and nebulous, though oft-used, term "immigrants." The first (of four) panels at the hearing focused on the rights of migrant workers, and featured moving testimonies from a South Asian construction worker, a Latina street vendor, a Jamaican taxi driver, a South Asian domestic worker and a Liberian restaurant worker, among others. They demonstrated the wide array of invisible human rights violations that are suffered on a daily basis by many thousands of migrant workers in the state, and around the country.

Beneath the diversity, however, lay a simple and uncomplicated similarity: as Mr. J, a Pakistani construction worker, stated plainly, "We came here for a better life." Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the United States leave their home countries for greater opportunities here only to find themselves working long hours for little pay (sometimes none at all), and often abused and exploited without legal remedies.

Xenophobia and racism towards migrants in the U.S. has only worsened since 9/11. As we learned at the hearing from advocates at the New York State Defenders Association Immigrant Defense Project, Families for Freedom, Human Rights First and affected community members, the detention of asylum-seekers, long-term permanent residents, parents of U.S. citizens, and others in deplorable conditions demonstrates a complete lack of due process. In 2006, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security arrested over 1.6 million individuals (including both undocumented and legal permanent residents). Of these, 230,000 were held in detention (pdf).

Mr. Jean Pierre Kamwa, a formerly detained asylum seeker, recounted his experiences fleeing imprisonment in Cameroon only to find himself living like a prisoner in a detention facility in the United States, the supposed standard in human rights protection. Mr. Kamwa’s case is sadly not uncommon. Under U.S. law, asylum seekers are subject to mandatory detention upon their arrival in the U.S, and as a result (pdf), are detained in immigration jails in the United States in prison-like conditions for months, and sometimes years.

Creating awareness of these issues is at least half the struggle, and I hope that Dr. Bustamante’s visit, and his subsequent report, will do just that.

I’m unsure whether I should feel really optimistic, or incredibly depressed.

I’ll begin with the glass-half-full perspective. On Saturday, I testified before Dr. Bustamante on the struggles faced by immigrants living in the United States. I was joined by representatives from more than a dozen organizations.

Why do I feel optimistic? The Special Rapporteur is charged with making recommendations on how to remedy violations of the human rights of immigrants. From my own experience testifying before Dr. Bustamante, I know that he takes this mandate seriously. As representatives from the Workplace Project, United Day Laborers of Freehold, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the ACLU and NYCLU testified about the struggles that immigrants face today, Dr. Bustamante listened attentively, asked questions, and appeared genuinely concerned about the status of the rights and freedoms of immigrants in the United States.

But the glass also seems half empty. The stories I heard yesterday were heartbreaking: testimony about detention conditions in Massachusetts where immigrant inmates spend 23 hours in confinement, with overhead lights kept on 24 hours a day; stories about detention centers in New Jersey that are freezing cold in the winter, and steaming hot in the summer.

Several individuals testified about the post-9/11 backlash, including the experiences of the September 11 detainees, the designation given to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men detained by the FBI, immigration authorities, and local police in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, often simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The government eventually charged the detainees with immigration violations, but continued to hold them as terrorism suspects. A Justice Department report about the "September 11 detainees" found a pattern of abuse that included the denial of access to counsel and physical and verbal abuse. For example, the DOJ report found, prison guards slammed some of the detainees against a wall hung with an American flag reading "these colors don’t run." The September 11 detainees, according to the DOJ report, were eventually cleared of terrorism charges, but only after being detained for months.

My testimony focused on the growing movement in towns, cities, and counties to pass anti-immigrant ordinances that attempt to drive out immigrants and deputize local government officials, and even residents themselves, to become immigration enforcement agents. These ordinances target anyone who speaks with an accent or looks foreign, and prevent innocent individuals from finding employment, housing or even receiving vital government services.

When I listened to these stories, it was hard not to feel that human rights advocates had too much to tackle. Even Dr. Bustamante at one point interjected to remind the audience that his hands were tied, and that he had to deal with a United Nations structure that at times stifled proactive change.

But now I remember where this hearing took place: an auditorium in Cooper Union, just steps away from the Great Hall at Cooper Union. The Great Hall is the birthplace of the NAACP and the women’s suffrage movement. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, before he became president, delivered a stirring speech at the Great Hall about the need to abolish slavery.

Are we in a similar movement today? Maybe future generations will remember our current struggles as an inspiring story of overcoming injustice?

So, maybe the glass is half full?

Dr. Bustamante arrived in Tucson late Thursday evening. He visited the Florence Detention Center early in the morning on May 4, then traveled to the border where he met with federal officials at the Nogales Border Patrol Station, which covers 32 miles of border from the Patagonia Mountains east of Nogales to Ruby, west of Nogales. It’s one of the country’s busiest border patrol facilities, and has seen a tremendous influx of federal resources in recent years. There are cameras, sensors, lights and fences , all high tech gadgets that contribute to the militarization of the once-pristine Arizona-Sonora border.

On Saturday morning, Dr. Bustamante met with Dr. Bruce Parks, Pima County’s Medical Examiner. Since the Border Patrol has no real methodology for tracking migrant deaths, Dr. Parks has made an increased effort over the past few years to identify bodies of migrants who die in the harsh Arizona desert. From 2003 through 2006, 721 bodies were recovered in the desert, often due to exposure to heat or cold.

At around noon, Dr. Bustamante took a quick break for lunch at Las Cazuelitas de Tucson, where he met with activists and leaders from Coalición de Derechos Humanos, and with representatives from other NGOs from the Phoenix area, including the Macehualli Day Labor Center and the ACLU of Arizona. The group traveled to the Armory Park Senior Center, where a room full of nearly two dozen community members who have been directly impacted by the government’s misguided border policies greeted Bustamante. One by one, these courageous individuals shared their personal stories.

Arturo Rodriguez, a soft-spoken 16-year-old, gave a heartfelt testimony about his first-hand encounter with Roy Warden, a local anti-immigrant vigilante who threatened to kill Arturo before punching him. The teen captured the attack on video; it later served as the only reason police decided to charging Warden with assault.

Sara Roberts, a nurse and volunteer with Samaritans and No More Deaths, gave the SR a clinical run down of what bodily distress migrants face while crossing the border. Fractures, sprains, severe dehydration and kidney failure all signal the body is shutting down, Roberts told him, and that at temperatures above 104 degrees, you increase your chances of dying by 50 percent. In the last stages of death, people begin to hallucinate and eat sand in their quest for water.

Melissa McCormick from the Binational Migration Institute (BMI) of the University of Arizona’s Mexican American Studies and Research Center then gave a quick rundown of the correlation between migrant deaths due to exposure and the federal government’s mid-1990s policy to move migration away from urban centers like San Diego and El Paso and into dangerous, remote expanses of Arizona’s western desert. Creating a "funnel effect," the policy caused a 22.2 percent increase in the migrant deaths due to exposure.

Raja Jorjani, an attorney with the Florence Immigration Project, continued the discussion on conditions of confinement for immigrant detainees. Immigrants are spending up to seven months in jail without knowing their charges or if they’ll ever be released. Longtime residents are being prosecuted for non-violent drug convictions and being detained on exorbitantly high bonds. Two-hundred and fifty of the detainees are immigrant children being warehoused at shelters in the Phoenix area. Solitary confinement is being used as a treatment for mental health problems , a burden that often prompts people to abandon their valid legal claims and risk deportation for fear of continued imprisonment.

High school student Luis Nava talked about his experience being questioned by immigration officials and placed in deportation proceedings after his teacher inquired whether he could cross to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for a school field trip. Although the case was dropped after the judge confirmed he was targeted of racial profiling, it served as a frightening reminder of how immigration officials still selectively enforce laws against people of color.

Miguel Espinoza Vazquez, a Arizona State University student who is facing deportation after a Gilbert officer stopped him for making an improper right turn, told of how he’s lived in the U.S. for most of his life, never missed a day of high school, earned a scholarship to ASU, and is now being deported to a country he knows nothing about. He’s out on $2,500 bail and now trying to figure our how to pass as many finals and take as many credits as possible before being deported. The irony: He’s a justice major.

The meeting ended with testimonies by two members of local, indigenous Native American tribes who are working to secure rights of passage for ceremonial purposes along the border, where much of the militarization has closed off routes for southern territories where ceremonies are held. A Tohono O’odhom activist ended the meeting with this final plea for the SR: "We just want free passage in our own territory."

When I attended the SR’s visit to Immokalee, Fla., I was particularly struck by the testimony of one worker, who spoke on behalf on the Farmworker Association of Florida in Immokalee. Speaking about migrant workers being thought of as tools, he said, “They [the farmers] don’t think about our feelings and needs because they just think of us as tools and tools don’t have feelings.” As the child of an immigrant myself, I understand the feelings of not wanting to rock the boat in new surroundings — the workers who testified demonstrated bravery by being able to “rock the boat” by coming forward to share their stories.

The same worker told about migrant field workers being told to keep picking tomatoes despite hurricane warnings. Apparently while the local news was advising everyone in the path of the storm to take shelter, the farmers were more concerned about the tomatoes being ruined during the storm than the workers surviving the storm — after all, tools don’t need to take shelter.

I’m glad that the United States extended the invitation to the SR, but the sad reality is that while U.S. often holds itself out as a model on human rights issues there are a number of human rights abuses that occur right here in Florida. Undocumented immigrants often bare the brunt of many forms of discrimination and abuse because people know that their status often prevents them publicly voicing complaints. This makes migrant workers easy targets for exploitation.

During the visit, we heard stories of workers not being paid at all, and guestworkers afraid of deportation if they complained. While some workers were not being paid, others told of having to pay over $1,800 to rent trailers that house up to four migrant workers: more than the price of a luxury apartment in Downtown Miami. Something is really wrong with this picture.

The SR arrived in Los Angeles just before police violently attacked immigration rally participants in MacArthur Park. The unjustified violence perfectly illustrated the criminalization of immigrants and the ways in which they bear the brunt of abusive police and immigration tactics.

The NGOs that planned the site visits, presentations and community testimony for the SR visit focused on the federal enforcement system (including raids and detention), workers’ rights and the criminalization of immigrants.

The first day’s testimony began with Maria Elena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), who presented the history of immigration raids in Los Angeles and discussed the problems inherent with the Social Security "No Match" letters and employer verification databases.

"For almost a year I did not see the sun because I went to work early in the morning and returned home late at night," said Prakash Gramire from South Asian Network, who talked about the exploitation of Nepali and other South Asian immigrant workers. Prakash stressed that even legal immigrants were forced to work 6 or 7 days a week without overtime pay, breaks or medical insurance because they did not speak English or know how to seek resources.

Representatives from California Rural Legal Assistance brought farmworker issues to the attention of the SR. The most important message was that without proper enforcement of rights and protections of farmworkers, all existing laws are rendered meaningless.

On the second day, community members and advocates talked about youth forced to live on streets or enter the state system when their parents are picked up by immigration authorities, and the forced repatriation of Southeast Asians. "Doesn’t the Constitution and due process apply to immigrants?" asked Cambodian community member "V" while describing the overcrowded conditions and lack of mental health treatment at the San Pedro detention center. V witnessed 20 people crammed into a space meant for six people, immigration officers "mistakenly" classifying Latinos so that they would be beaten up in the Asian pod and the suicide of a Cambodian man who was despondent over his pending deportation.

The second day also highlighted the importance of legal experts and advocates working together with organizers and community members who bear the weight of outrageous immigration laws. Lawyers from the NILC and the ACLU outlined the laws and their effects while community members shared personal stories of how these laws affected themselves and their communities.

Members of the Youth Justice Coalition gave compelling testimony about the series of policies that have criminalized the daily existence of immigrant youth, such as gang databases, gang injunctions and juvenile life sentences without parole.

Homies Unidos wrapped up the SR’s L.A. visit with a tour of Pico Union, MacArthur Park and Koreatown that interwove their personal and familial histories with a sociological analysis of gangs and the pattern of gentrification. "I’m trying to visualize where my mom’s house used to be," said Alejandro, an organizer with Homies Unidos, while pointing to a vacant, fenced-in lot that once held several homes and is now slated for development into condos or lofts. The demolition of working class family homes is occurring hand-in-hand with increased FBI surveillance and police targeting of immigrant youth in order to meet the thirst of an ever-expanding downtown.

Shiu-Ming Cheer-Gatdula of the South Asian Network wrote this post, with Greg Simons of the Coalition for Human Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles. To learn more about the Special Rapporteur’s visit, go to www.aclu.org/humanrightsofmigrants.