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In the first case to make it to court over the no-fly list, DHS has taken abuse of power to a whole new level.<\/p>\nIn the first case to make it to court over the no-fly list, DHS has taken abuse of power to a whole new level.<\/p>\n
The case, Rahinah Ibrahim v. Department of Homeland Security<\/a>.<\/p>\n The claim of DHS is that the list is a state secret, so they won’t even acknowledge that there is a list, much less if someone is on the list, until of course the airlines refuse you a boarding pass, but even then they cannot tell you why they are:<\/p>\n Airlines aren\u2019t told why they have been forbidden to transport any particular person, and are forbidden from telling anyone that they are on the \u201cno-fly\u201d list \u2014 although of course that eventually becomes obvious when the airline refuses to issue a boarding pass to an otherwise qualified fare-paying would-be passenger. The U.S. government\u2019s policy is never to confirm or deny the existence of a no-fly order. That is considered a \u201cstate secret\u201d.<\/span> But wait there’s more.<\/p>\n You see, after the lawyers for Dr. Ibrahim put her daughter on the witness list, DHS put that daughter on their no fly list<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Federal civil rights trial in Ibrahim v. DHS \u2014 the first lawsuit seeking judicial review of a government \u201cno-fly\u201d order to make it to trial \u2014 began this morning in San Francisco with a surprise:<\/span> (emphasis original<\/i>)<\/p>\n
<\/span> Needless to say, all this makes a mockery of due process and has, until now, frustrated judicial review of no-fly decisions and orders. Despite numerous attempts to challenge the system of \u201cno-fly\u201d lists and orders, Rahinah Ibrahim v. Department of Homeland Security, et al.<\/a> (docket and more recent documents<\/a>) is the first such case to make it to trial.<\/span>
<\/span> Dr. Ibrahim, a Malaysian citizen, was a doctoral candidate at Stanford University<\/a>, in the U.S. on a valid student visa, when she tried to fly home to Malaysia with her daughter in 2005. She was refused passage on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco International Airport, detained, and interrogated by SFO airport police. Although she was ultimately bound for Malaysia, she had planned to stop over in Hawaii to present a research paper at a conference there. She was denied boarding on a domestic flight from San Francisco to Kona<\/a>. She was allowed to fly to Kona the next day, and on to Malaysia after the conference a few days late, but her U.S. visa was then revoked (although she wasn\u2019t notified, and didn\u2019t learn this until she was at the airport in K.L. trying to check in for a flight back to SFO a couple of months later). She hasn\u2019t been able to return to the U.S. since, even though she had lived legally in the U.S. for many years<\/a>, had met and married her husband in the U.S., and one of children was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. She completed her dissertation remotely, received her Stanford Ph.D. in absentia<\/i>, and is now a professor at a major Malaysian public university<\/a>, with an extensive list of academic publications.<\/span>
<\/span> Several other \u201cno-fly\u201d lawsuits have been dismissed without getting far enough to have a judge, much less a jury, review the challenged \u201cno-fly\u201d orders on their merits. Others that haven\u2019t yet made it to trial, but haven\u2019t yet been dismissed, include that of Gulet Mohamed<\/a> in Northern Virgina and Latif et al. v. Holder<\/a> in Portland, OR. Both of these cases involve U.S. citizens who were effectively banished from the U.S. by having their names being placed on the \u201cno-fly\u201d list while they were abroad, preventing them from coming home.<\/span>
<\/span> The city and county of San Francisco paid Dr. Ibrahim $225,000 to settle her claims against the airport police, but the Federal government agencies and employees have opposed Dr. Ibrahim\u2019s right to even have the court review the legality of their actions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/span> When the case was called at 7:30 a.m., Elizabeth Pipkin and Christine Peek, pro bono lawyers for the plaintiff Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim, began by informing U.S. District Judge William Alsup that Dr. Ibrahim\u2019s oldest daughter Raihan Mustafa Kamal was denied boarding in Kuala Lumpur yesterday when she tried to board a flight to San Francisco to observe and testify at the trial in her mother\u2019s lawsuit.<\/span>
<\/span> Ms. Mustafa Kamal, an attorney licensed to practice law in Malaysia, was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. Ms. Mustafa Kamal was with her mother when Dr. Ibrahim was denied boarding on a flight from K.L. to San Francisco in 2005 (after having been told that her name had been removed from the \u201cno-fly\u201d list) under what now seem eerily similar circumstances. The DHS had been given notice that Ms. Mustafa Kamal would testify at the trial as an eyewitness to those events she witnessed in 2005.<\/span>
<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cWe may have to have a separate evidentiary hearing about this,\u201d Judge Alsup said, and ordered the defendants to provide further information tomorrow (Tuesday). \u201cI want to know whether the government did something to obstruct a witness, a U.S. citizen<\/b>.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n