American Civil Liberties Union

Abdullah al-Kidd is a Kansas-born American citizen, a father, and a graduate of the University of Idaho where he was a star football player.  And in 2003, he became the victim of the FBI’s misuse of a little-known federal law to imprison him without charges.  He was arrested and imprisoned under harsh conditions for more than two weeks—even though the FBI had no probable cause to believe he had done anything wrong.  The ACLU represents Mr. al-Kidd in his effort to hold the government accountable for its violation of his rights.  Last week, the federal district court in Idaho issued two long-awaited decisions calling the FBI to account for Mr. al-Kidd’s unlawful arrest.

Alejandro Rodriguez’s parents brought him from Mexico when he was a baby. Prior to his detention, Alejandro earned his green card and lived near his extended family in Los Angeles, working as a dental assistant to support his two U.S. citizen children. The two convictions that gave rise to his detention and deportation case were minor and non-violent— joyriding when he was 19, and a misdemeanor drug possession when he was 24. Alejandro posed no flight risk or danger to the community and yet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locked Alejandro up for more than three years without a bond hearing. Bond hearings are a basic and guaranteed principle of due process in the American judicial system, but thousands of immigrants like Alejandro are denied this fundamental right on a daily basis.

Today we filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to demand the government release basic, accurate information about its targeted killing program.

In "Crime or War: Execution or Assassination?" David Shipler of The Shipler Report writes about why due process — even for terrorism suspects who have admitted to plotting against the U.S. — is important:

So, why bother to bring the guilty man in for a fair trial? For thorough truth-finding, one could say, or to uphold the pageantry of constitutional justice, which is a crown jewel of our democracy. To lend unquestioned legitimacy to the ultimate sentence, even if it is death, so the world does not look upon America with repugnance. To keep the trappings of civilized order so that we do not become a vigilante state. To stop ourselves from taking a step down a long slope whose ends might be oppression very different from anything we can now imagine…

Shipler also calls for the Obama administration to reveal the standards under which Americans are placed on the CIA's "kill lists," information we seek in our Predator Drone Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit. But the government has mostly stonewalled our attempts to uncover basic information about targeted killings.  The CIA refuses to confirm or deny whether it has any records at all relating to targeted killings using drones, even though the CIA’s involvement in the drone program is widely acknowledged.  And other government agencies flatly refuse to release documents explaining the government’s asserted legal basis for conducting targeted killings — including against U.S. citizens — using drones.