On WorkingForChange.com: Barry Steinhardt on the Great Real ID Rebellion

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union is urging a federal court to step in after the FBI and DHS failed to produce even a single record on the use of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and fusion centers to monitor and disseminate information on protestors and communities of color. This comes eight months after the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for these documents, and six months after we sued for them. JTTFs and fusion centers are core components of the U.S. government’s massive domestic intelligence apparatus, serving as nexus points for information sharing among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. There are nearly 200 JTTFs and 80 fusion centers around the country. They operate with minimal oversight and scant accountability, and have long histories of wrongly targeting activists and communities of color, often associating protest with “terrorism,” without any evidence of wrongdoing. The ACLU’s FOIA request seeks to shed light on JTTF and fusion center surveillance during both the Biden administration and the first Trump administration to assess their impact on privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. These documents are especially timely given the recent order by the Trump administration that, pending the creation of “Homeland Security Task Forces,” the JTTFs are to directly coordinate with DHS, as well as all state and local agencies, “to assist in the execution of President Trump’s immigration-related initiatives.” “As Donald Trump ramps up his abhorrent mass deportation regime and pressures government agencies and officials to follow his reckless orders, it’s more important than ever for the American people to know what guardrails, if any, the FBI and DHS have in place to protect the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of our communities,” said Aamra Ahmad, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. During the first Trump administration, then-Attorney General Barr deployed JTTFs to surveil racial justice activists protesting the police killings of George Floyd and other Black people. And, around the country, fusion centers have similarly targeted political, religious, and social justice activists, disseminating intelligence reports that warn law enforcement to surveil and report on protestors and protest activity. For example, in 2019, the Virginia Fusion Center sensationalized environmental activists’ protests against gas pipeline construction, equating a boycott threat and ignoring police commands with designated foreign terrorist organizations’ bombings and violence.

Sanctions would endanger the investigation of war crimes across the globe and prove a grave blow to human rights.

WASHINGTON – Four years after a district court ruled that a Trump-era policy blocking military service members’ expedited path to citizenship was unlawful, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of the District of Columbia are in court urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to uphold this ruling. “The promise of expedited citizenship Congress has made to non-citizen service members is a moral imperative embedded in our history, values, and laws," said Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney at ACLU. “If you are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for America, you are – and should be – entitled to become American citizens.” For over a century, Congress has granted non-citizens serving during armed conflict eligibility to naturalize at the start of their service, so that they can deploy overseas as United States citizens. A 2017 Trump administration policy introduced new time-in-service requirements that effectively deprived service members of the opportunity to naturalize before potential assignment overseas. In April 2020, the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of eight non-citizens serving in the U.S. military who represent a class of thousands in uniform. A federal district court struck down this policy in August 2020 and the first Trump administration appealed. The Biden administration rescinded the policy but maintained the Trump-era appeal while it allegedly developed a new policy. However, the Biden policy never materialized, and, now, the Department of Defense under President Trump is once again back in court seeking to overturn the victory the ACLU’s clients won four years ago. The ACLU will argue that the case is moot and should be dismissed because the Trump policy was rescinded and there is no current policy. It will also argue that if the court determines the case is not moot, it should affirm its clients’ victory in the district court. “Since World War I, the United States has naturalized non-citizen soldiers before they deploy, so that they serve — and perhaps die — as citizens of the nation they serve,” said Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel at the ACLU of the District of Columbia. “Congress has recognized for a century that this is proper, and the Pentagon has no right to change it.”

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — In a long-awaited ruling in United States v. Hasbajrami, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York last night held that warrantless queries — or searches — conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violated the Fourth Amendment. The ruling is the first of its kind, and it follows years of public revelations about how Section 702 has been used by the government to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans, including protesters, members of Congress, and journalists. The court's opinion addresses numerous queries the FBI conducted of the defendant, Mr. Agron Hasbajrami, during an investigation years ago. The government initially hid its use of Section 702 in Mr. Hasbajrami's case and others, reversing course only after the Department of Justice's policy of wrongly concealing Section 702 surveillance in criminal cases came to light. “This is a major constitutional ruling on one of the most abused provisions of FISA,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “As the court recognized, the FBI's rampant digital searches of Americans are an immense invasion of privacy, and trigger the bedrock protections of the Fourth Amendment. Section 702 is long overdue for reform by Congress, and this opinion shows why.” The decision follows a groundbreaking 2019 ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which recognized that Section 702 queries of people in the United States are searches that trigger separate Fourth Amendment scrutiny. The court of appeals sent the case back to the lower court for further constitutional analysis, culminating in yesterday’s ruling. While the new opinion holds that the FBI’s Section 702 queries violated the Fourth Amendment, the court ultimately denied the defendant's motion to suppress the resulting evidence on separate grounds. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Hasbajrami in the Second Circuit.