Aviva Stahl: I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and the background to your work at the CCR?
Rachel Meeropol: Sure. So I’ve been at CCR now for nine years, I came here straight out of law school, and ever since I’ve come here I’ve really been focusing on prisoners rights and immigrant rights issues. I planned in law school to really focus on prisoners rights, thinking about the way that power differentials in prison allow for such extremes of abuse. It’s a situation where’s there’s relatively no outside control or oversight, and individual prison guards have complete control over the lives of the people they’re supposed to watch over and keep safe. In sort of thinking about the situation on an emotional level, to imagine what it feels like to be in that situation where you have next to no personal power in the way you relate to individuals who are guarding you. It just seemed like such a terrible situation, such a situation that’s so obviously ripe for abuse. And in coming here, one of my main goals here was to do work to empower prisoners to fight for their own rights. That’s why we started the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook, and to support prisoners who are engaged in that kind of struggle. And you know, a fair amount of my work here in the last years has focused on that kind of effort, which I’m really thankful for.
AS: What are the wider issues that you think traverse all of the national security cases you’re involved in?
RM: One of the clearest issues that – it’s not fair to say it arose after 9/11, it’s something that’s been happening for a long time, but it’s shifted and increased since 9/11- and that’s with the religious and racial profile as a form of fighting terrorism and crime-fighting. Obviously, in African American and Latino populations, there’s been a struggle against racial profiling for a quite long time, and I think that that struggle was actually really gaining ground prior to 9/11. Advocates in those areas really started to make great strides in terms of changing public perception about the utility of racial profiling, if not the morality of it. But since 9/11, I think all those advances have been completely lost. And the idea of religious profiling, has been all but codified in our law, and accepted. And that’s of course, not just inefficient, but incredibly morally outrageous, to place blame on an entire population, and really treat them differently, based on their religion, their ethnicity, where they come from. I see the issue of religious and racial profiling as moving through all of the national security work that I’m working on, including Turkmen and Aref.
AS: Do you want to just talk just briefly about where those two lawsuits are?
RM: Sure. It’s hard to do that briefly, but I will try. Turkmen, especially, has very long and complicated history. We filed Turkmen v. Ashcroft in 2002, at a time when the 9/11 detentions will still ongoing. The case was brought on behalf of noncitizens who’d been swept up after 9/11 and held in connection to the terrorism investigation, but under the purported authority of the immigration law. So they were people who had overstayed their visas, who had worked without papers – civil immigration violations. Yet based on their religion, their ethnicity, their country of origin, they were presumed to be connected to terrorism, or to have information about terrorists, even though there was never any evidentiary basis to believe that they had any connection to terrorism, or for most of them, even to any crimes. Despite this, they were rounded up and held under Attorney General Ashcroft’s hold-until-cleared policy. That meant that until they were cleared of any connection to terrorism, they would be detained as suspected terrorists. What that detention meant is that they were held in super maximum security conditions of confinement. So many of the detainees were sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where they were held in the ADMAX SHU. Lockdown 23 to 24 hours a day, only moved with handcuffs and shackles, harassed and abused, kept from practicing their religion, beaten, called terrorist, the list goes on and on.
So we filed this lawsuit against high level government officials who actually created this policy, including then Attorney General Ashcroft, the current Director the of the FBI, Robert Mueller, and then-commissioner of the INS, James Ziegler, along with a whole host of other government employees at the Metropolitan Detention Center who actually implemented these unconstitutional orders. The government defendants moved to dismiss the case shortly after we filed it, and that issue was not decided until 2005 or 2006, at which point the judge dismissed half our claims, our claims challenging the fact of the detentions themselves as unlawful, based on the fact that they were pre-textual misuses of the immigration law really to investigate people for ties to terrorism, without the protections that American citizens get when they are suspected of committing a crime. We lost those claims, but we were allowed to move forward on our claims against the high level defendants, and all the other defendants, about conditions of confinement and abuse and religious profiling at MDC. The government defendants appealed, and we appealed as well, the claims that we’d lost, so we had a cross-appeal up to the 2nd Circuit on these issues. At that same time, [there was] El-Magrabi and Iqbal v. Ashcroft, which is a case on behalf of two criminal detainees, so they were noncitizens also subject to the Ashcroft sweeps, but held on minor criminal charges as opposed to immigration charges, and that’s not part of the Turkmen class. Their case went up to the Supreme Court at the same time. The Supreme Court issued a terrible decision in 2009, effectively raising what civil rights plaintiffs have to plead to sue high level government officials. While all this was going on, five of our plaintiffs settled their claims with the United States for $1.26 million, and subsequently we amended our complaint to add six new plaintiffs also held at the Metropolitan Detention Center. The 2nd Circuit basically affirmed the decision from the District Court, and we were before the District Court with our newly filed complaint, the complaint that adds the six new plaintiffs, and adds a lot of the information that we gained in discovery, because we were in discovery through this whole period... to try to provide the factual detail that the Supreme Court required in Iqbal to hold these high level officials accountable. The defendants once again moved to dismiss, and we argued that issue last spring, and we’re now waiting for a decision from the District Court judge about whether the case can move forward into discovery once again. That’s about as short an explanation it’s possible to give about Turkmen. I know it’s long and complex.
In terms of Aref v. Holder, it’s a much more recent case, so it’s much easier to describe. We filed the case in April of 2010, to challenge the Bureau of Prison’s creation and policies at the two Communication Management Units at the federal Bureau of Prisons. So we brought the case on behalf of current and former prisoners at the CMU and their wives, to challenge the ways in which the CMUs interfere with family integrity, the fact that prisoners are brought into the CMUs without any process or any meaningful explanation of why they’re there, or the ability to seek release from the units, to earn release into general population based on good behaviour. We also allege that the CMU’s limitations on communication and access to family amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, specifically the across the board ban on contact visitation. We brought an equal protection claim challenging the fact that the units are predominately Muslim, the fact that there’s over a 1000% overrepresentation of Muslims within the units, as the units are 65-75% Muslim compared to 6% Muslim population in the federal prison system. We also brought retaliation claims on behalf of several clients who were moved into the CMUs despite perfectly clean or relatively clean disciplinary records, in retaliation for their protected speech or practice of their religion. Finally, we brought an Administrative Procedures Act claim challenging the fact that the units were opened without notice and comment rulemaking. The Bureau of Prisons and the government defendants moved to dismiss the case shortly after we filed it. In April of 2011, exactly a year after we filed, the District Court judge granted that motion in part and denied it in it part. So he has allowed our procedural due process, and retaliation claims to move forward into discovery. We are just starting the discovery process. We have our first scheduling conference before the court on August 15 and that will set all the deadlines for summary judgment moving forward on the case.
AS: Did you want to speak a little bit about the impact, from your perspective, that being in the CMU has had on prisoners who are there?
RM: Well, the reality of the CMU is that it’s about social isolation. It’s about limiting a prisoner’s ability to communicate with their family and with their community outside of prison. Communication is extremely tightly restricted. Prisoners only get one to two 15 minute phone calls a week, 1-2 four hours visits a month and there’s absolutely no contact visitation. That means that all visits, even with young children, spouses, are through Plexiglas without the opportunity to hold hands, to hug, to embrace. In general, the Bureau of Prisons and most state prison systems recognise how important contact visitation is, and how important maintaining good ties to one’s family and one’s community are to rehabilitation and to decrease recidivism post-release. This is known across the board as being good correctional policy to really encourage those ties, because that’s what enables the prisoner to re-enter society and his community after his release. Despite this clear correctional policy, prisoners at the CMU receive incredibly limited visitation without explanation and without security need. You can see the effect that this has had on prisoners themselves and on their family members. Our clients describe it as just incredibly painful, to sit across from their young children, their wives, to know that they’re so close to them and yet so far away in every way that counts. And I think, it’s especially interesting to talk to clients who’ve been moved out of the CMU and then moved back in... Ever since the CCR field its lawsuit, there’s been a pattern of transfers from the CMU. This is something that never happened before we filed the suit, but now they are slowly moving people in and out of the units, and we think it’s in response to litigation. And happily, some of our clients have been moved out of the unit, and have had the actual opportunity to have the 300 minutes of phone calls a month that most prisoners get in the federal system, to have contact visitation with the children, and wives and friends, and the difference in their lives, and their mental and emotional well-being is just amazing, cannot be overstated.
AS: Given that the CMUs are populated 70% by Muslims, and then mostly some left-wing activists, I’m curious whether you think, in your personal opinion, that people are being incorrectly identified as perceived threats to national security, or whether you think there’s a deeper, ulterior motive for putting people inside CMUs?
RM: I think it’s about controlling a perceived threat about radicalization. There is a predominate philosophy right now, in the government and within the Bureau of Prisons, that Muslims, that individuals especially who hold leadership positions in the Muslim community in prison ,who talk about Islam, who teach about Islam, that these people are a threat. That simply on the basis of those religious ideals, they pose a greater threat to the BOP than other prisoners, and that that, in itself, is enough in the eyes of the Bureau of Prisons to justify harsher restrictions. We have several clients in the CMU, and know of other prisoners, who were convicted of crimes that have absolutely no connection to terrorism, sort of more run of the mill bank robbery, manslaughter, these types of things. And [they] were moved into the CMU without any meaningful explanation. When prisoners are sent to the CMU they’re given a one page notice of transfer that is supposed to explain the reason for their transfer. Clients in this category all have the exact same language on their notice of transfer. It says that reliable evidence indicates your involvement in recruitment and radicalization of other prisoners. There is absolutely no way to get any underlying information about what that’s about. Who were they supposed to have recruited? When? Toward what ends? In what prison? Why didn’t they get an incident report about it, if they were actually engaged in this kind of behaviour? There’s nothing, there’s no evidentiary support. Which leads me to the conclusion that these people are being moved into the CMU because they are perceived as a religious threat, or because they are perceived as someone who is a leader among the prison population, as someone who advocates for prisoners against prison abuses, someone who the wardens simply want to shut up.
AS: Could you say a little bit about the systemic nature of the abuses and the difficulties in trying to establish that this is something systemic?
RM: That’s really one of the core questions of Turkmen. Is it just that people were abused, that the 9/11 detainees were abused because there was poor oversight at the facility where they were held, and because the guards all thought they were suspected terrorists, and sort of acted on their own to treat them in these outrageous manners? Or were the detentions themselves set up to facilitate this abuse? We argue that it’s the latter, but collecting that evidence is really difficult. Civil rights plaintiffs don’t have access to high level government meetings, where Ashcroft and Mueller and the rest of their cronies at the Department of Justice actually sat down and decided, how are we going to treat these detainees? What are we going to do here to encourage them to cooperate with law enforcement? What we do have, happily, what we have, are notes from interviews conducted by the Office of the Inspector General in their review of the 9/11 detentions and the resulting abuse. We also have journalistic stories, including interviews with people who were at these meetings, who can attest to the fact that there were such meetings, and that the treatment of detainees was discussed. Our understanding of what happened is that the attorney general at the time, created a policy to restrict the detainees access to the outside world, which in itself necessitates solitary confinement and limit on communications. And to make their conditions as restrictive as possible within the federal system and to let law enforcement know, throughout the country, that these were suspected terrorists, or people who are suspected to have information about terrorists, and they needed to be encouraged in any way possible to cooperate. Now, that’s not a direct order to abuse, but it’s pretty close. And I think that that should be enough, that that has to be enough, that that kind of information has to be enough, to allow civil rights plaintiffs who’ve experienced this abuse, and there’s hundreds of them across the country, this wasn’t just isolated incidents, to get into the discovery process. To actually force the individuals who we believe created these policies, to answer to what happened, to answer to whether they knew, when they were giving that order, that abuse would occur. Whether they cared that abuse would occur. And we’ll see if courts agree, that’s where we are right now, that’s the battle we’re fighting.
AS: I think one thing that also really struck me about the case was that so many people hadn’t even been on the radar of law enforcement or immigration officials until 9/11 tip offs. So trying to think not just about the top-down participation in the criminalization of Muslims, but also the way that it requires the day-to-day consent and participation of other Americans. I’m curious if you wanted to say something about that.
RM: That’s very stark with Turkmen. We actually know all of the tips that led to the arrest of our clients and many of the other 9/11 detainees. So for example, we know that Mr. Turkmen himself was arrested because his landlady called the FBI hotline shortly after 9/11 and told the FBI that she rented an apartment to several Middle Eastern men. She reported that they were good tenants and paid their rent on time, and that’s it, but that they were Middle Eastern, and if they were involved in terrorism and she didn’t say anything, she couldn’t live with herself. So she turned them in. And on that information alone, Mr. Turkmen and his roommates were put into detention and held as suspected terrorists. We know that one of our other clients, a Nepalese man, a Nepalese Buddhist, was seen by a D.A. [District Attorney] office employee videotaping on the street outside a building that happened to have an FBI office in the building. He was a tourist, and he was videotaping scenes in New York to bring back home with him to Nepal. But because he was perceived to be an Arab man videotaping, he was arrested, and held in connection to the terrorism investigation. We know that several of our former clients rented a P.O. box and someone at the post office turned them into the FBI, claiming that Arab men were renting a post office box and possibly sending out large amounts of money. These are the tips that everyday people called into the FBI. And what ties every single tip together, is a reference to an Arab or a Middle Eastern person. You see that in absolutely every single tip. Frequently, it’s not even accurate, its’ not even an accurate assessment of where the individual’s from, or their ethnicity, but this is what brought people into this dragnet.
AS: One of the things I’ve been thinking about since I started at Cageprisoners is whether, given how widespread Islamaphobia is in the US, if its even possible for people to get fair trials. I’m curious what you think about this – for example, in terms of discourse around closing Guantanamo and trying people here [in United States federal courts].
RM: Well, I think its clear that the criminal justice system right now in this country is not working for Muslims. If you look at the prosecution of Yassin Aref, for example, one of the CMU plaintiffs, I think that’s a prime example of just how broken the system is, because it’s this idea of this, this taint of FBI interest in somebody, is really enough to get a conviction, even there’s absolutely no underlying evidence, as there wasn’t in his case, and he’s now serving a long prison sentence.
AS: I’ve also been thinking about the CMUs, and the fact that they’ve been nicknamed “Little Guantanamos”, and Turkmen vs. Ashcroft, that people were insulted by guards, and had their religious practices impeded, the fact that dogs were used in the prison… I’ve been thinking about the links between Guantanamo and prisons here. Do you want to speak about whether you think that Guantanamo has influenced the treatment of prisoners here [in American civilian prisons]? Or whether you think it has to do with American prison practices in general?
RM: I think it’s more likely that generic abuse in prison has contributed to the abuse at Guantanamo and the abuse at Abu Gharib than that it came from the other way around. I think prisoners in this country have been experiencing that abuse for hundreds of years, unfortunately, and it’s just a reality of living in prison, a deplorable reality. There are clearly some parallels between Guantanamo and the CMUs, and the Ashcroft roundups, but I think that parallel is really about religious profiling than anything else. It’s about individuals being seen as second class citizens, or second class non-citizens, such that they are not entitled to the same process that white Americans are used to receiving. I think it’s important, though to recognize the differences between Guantanamo and the CMUs, and the immigration raids as well. The most obvious difference of course, is that people in CMUs have been convicted of crimes. Now whether or not that conviction was fair or not, or good policy, is an open question. I mean… I have my own answer to that question, but there has been a criminal trial, and that is just a difference that cannot be overstated when you’re considering the situation of men in Guantanamo who have been held for years and years now, without trial, without charges, without any light at the end of the tunnel, really. Or hope is that our clients in the CMU will eventually be able to put their lives back together. They have families who are desperately waiting to be able to hug them again and welcome that home. We know that that will happen for them eventually. Sadly we can’t say that same thing about Guantanamo detainees who face life long preventive detention.
AS: Do you think that things have changed from the Bush administration, from his approach to the War on Terror, to what it’s been under Obama? How have you felt post-Obama?
RM: Sadly, not much has changed at all. I certainly had a lot of hope that things would change. Obama led us to believe that things would change. And they have not, especially in this area of national security, looking at Guantanamo, looking at detention in the United States, it seems as if these policies are being ratcheted up, they’re being codified into law, the idea of preventive detention as something that is allowed in this country. It’s disgusting to me that a former constitutional law professor will consider that for even a moment. I mean, this is not what we thought we were getting. I also think that it’s not just in the area of national security, policing of Muslims either that we’re seeing, under this Obama administration. It’s also this idea of continuing to equate any sort of dissent, any political opposition, with terrorism, that is being ratcheted up under his administration. So for example, we do a lot of work here at CCR around green scare defence work, which is around the targeting of animal and environmental activists as terrorists. And these are activists whose crimes of property destruction and civil disobedience are currently being punished as terrorist offenses, with long prison sentence, and placement in a CMU. We’re seeing this across the political spectrum, across the religious spectrum.
AS: My last question is, how can everyday people get involved?
RM: I think one of the most important things is understanding what’s happening, and talking about what’s happening. It’s a very general statement, but it’s something that’s not going on enough. A lot of us were so hopeful when Obama came into office that we could say goodbye to the Bush era abuses, the abuses that were synonymous with his name, and its easy to stop thinking about these things are still going on under this administration. So I guess the first thing is just to be aware, and to make your friends and your family aware, to talk about it. A very concrete thing that people can do for prisoners is prison support work. Is writing letters to prisoners, is getting involved with prison book exchanges, is doing the kind of day to day support that so many people incarcerated in this country need, because that does make a very big difference. When we see things happening, when we see prisoners organizing, like with the Pelican Bay Hunger strike, those are moments when I think it’s required, for all of us on the outside, to take even a tiny supportive action, even if it’s just posting their demands on your Facebook page, something, to spread the message outside and through society. And of course, people are always encouraged to go to CCR’s website, ccrjustice.org, to get updates on our current cases and to find out more about campaigns that they can join.
RSS Feed
Please wait...
