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For Immediate Release
September, 19 2017, 03:15pm EDT
Contact:
Email:,press@lawyerscommittee.org
Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law Files Amicus Brief In SCOTUS Case
Regarding Trump’s Discriminatory Travel Ban Executive Order
WASHINGTON
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law this week filed an amicus curiae or "friend of the court" brief in the United States Supreme Court in the cases challenging President Trump's executive orders, which bar most nationals of Iran and five other predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The brief was filed in coordination with pro bono counsel Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP (APKS), Iranian-American civil rights lawyer Cyrus Mehri, and his Washington, D.C.-based firm Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, on behalf of four prominent Iranian American organizations: Pars Equality Center, the Iranian American Bar Association, the National Iranian American Council, and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, Inc. The brief highlights the harms to Iranians and Iranian Americans caused by the travel ban.
"President Trump's second attempt at a Muslim ban did nothing to cure the discriminatory and unconstitutional effect of the original travel ban. It continues to invite illegal profiling of minority and religious communities on the basis of race, national origin and religion right here in the United States," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "This kind of act stirs hate in our communities and it threatens the stability of our democracy."
The amicus brief filed on Monday states: "The government's argument trivializes the real, lasting, and irreparable injuries that the travel ban has visited on an entire community--for nothing more than invidious discrimination that President Trump and his advisors have scarcely bothered and utterly failed to conceal. The travel ban effectively tars every Iranian citizen, Muslim or non-Muslim, religious or secular, infant or adult, as a proponent of 'radical Islam' and an incipient terrorist. This baseless stereotyping has placed educational and career plans on hold, separated families, and disrupted (and even imperiled) countless lives."
President Trump's travel ban, parts of which have been struck down by multiple federal courts, has "upended the lives of thousands of individuals and families in the United States and around the world," the brief states. Those individuals, whose stories are related in the brief, include:
- Ali Asaei, an electrical engineer who came to the United States on an F-1 student visa in 2015. Mr. Asaei's family lives in Iran, and he has not seen his father or brother since 2013. The travel ban prevents his family members from visiting the United States.
- Omid Moghimi, a dual citizen of Iran and the United States, earned his medical degree from Tufts University in Boston and is now a resident in internal medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Dr. Moghimi married Dorsa Razi in July 2015 in Iran. While his wife ultimately gained admittance to the United States on a family visa, his mother-in-law remains in Iran, hoping to be reunited with her daughter and son-in-law.
- Pedram, who lives in Canada and has not lived in Iran since 1991. His parents, brother and sister, and his siblings' spouses and children all live in San Diego, California. Pedram's siblings are both naturalized American citizens, and his parents are lawful permanent residents in the process of obtaining their citizenship. Pedram's visa application has been placed in "administrative processing" and Pedram has received no further guidance from the State Department regarding his visa. In the meantime, Pedram's father suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed; his brother had a son born in the United States, whom Pedram has not yet had the chance to meet.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC separately filed litigation in February against the travel ban, which remains pending in the D.C. District Court. The lawsuit seeks to protect and defend the Iranian-American community in the United States and abroad from the harmful and discriminatory effects of the executive orders. Plaintiffs in the D.C. District Court lawsuit include the Pars Equality Center, Iranian American Bar Association (IABA), National Iranian American Council (NIAC), and Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, Inc. (PAAIA). This case marked the first major legal challenge to the travel ban on behalf of organizational clients in the D.C. District Court.
The Supreme Court brief filed on Monday includes testimony from the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA), whose members worked tirelessly on the front lines of travel ban response by providing legal support and assistance at airports, and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, Inc. (PAAIA), a national organization which in light of the travel ban has increased its public-education efforts to combat the rise in hate crimes against Iranian Americans, and has increased fundraising efforts to compensate victims of such crimes.
To read the full amicus brief, click here.
The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today.
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The country's largest Muslim civil rights group on Thursday called for added protections for U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar after Florida state Sen. Randy Fine issued an apparent threat against the two Muslim lawmakers.
Fine, who has the endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump in his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives, called himself the "Hebrew Hammer" in a post on X on Tuesday and suggested Reps. Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Omar (D-Minn.) should leave office for their own safety.
"Bombs away," he added.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has spoken out previously about anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim statements by Fine (R-19), called the lawmaker an "unhinged anti-Muslim bigot."
His apparent threat of violence "must be investigated by state and federal law enforcement authorities and condemned by both Democratic and Republican Party leadership," said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy executive director of CAIR. "President-elect Donald Trump, in particular, should denounce Mr. Fine's remarks and the Florida Republican Party should expel him."
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Fine was held in contempt of court in Florida earlier this year for making obscene gestures and mouthing curse words at a hearing. He is running in a special election set for April 1, 2025, due to Trump's appointment of Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) to be national security adviser.
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In contrast with Thanksgiving celebrations across the United States on Thursday, Native Americans held a National Day of Mourning, promoted accurate history, and championed Indigenous voices and struggles.
Despite rainy conditions, the United American Indians of New England held its 55th annual National Day of Mourning at Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Kisha James, who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and also Oglala Lakota, shared how her grandfather founded the event in 1970 and pledged to continue to "tear down the Thanksgiving mythology."
"The past influences the present" and "the settler project" continues with racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, James told the crowd. "The Pilgrims are not ancient history."
James took aim at fossil fuel pipelines, oil rigs, skyscrapers, corporations, the U.S. military, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of immigrants, and declared that "no one is illegal on stolen on land."
Jean-Luc Pierite, a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and president of the board of directors of the North American Indian Center of Boston who helped organize this year's gathering, toldUSA Today that "while we are mourning some tragic history but also contemporary issues, we are also expressing gratitude for each [other] and building this community space."
"Coming together as a community for a feast and to express gratitude—that's not something that was imported to this continent because of colonization," Pierite said. "Indigenous peoples have had these practices going back beyond, beyond colonial contact."
This year's event in Plymouth included speeches about the suffering of Palestinians—as Israel wages a U.S. government-backed war on the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 44,330 people, injured 104,933, and led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice—and of people impacted by extractive industries.
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In New York City, police
arrested 21 pro-Palestinian protesters who blocked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route.
According toABC 7:
For the second year in a row, the group ran in front of the Ronald McDonald float to briefly stop the parade.
This year, they jumped the barricades at West 55th Street just after 9:30 am.
Many sat on the ground, locking arms and chanting "Free, free Palestine!"
Others held a banner behind them, reading "Don't celebrate genocide! Arms embargo now."
Video footage shared on social media shows members of the New York Police Department grabbing protesters and their banner, and throwing at least one person face-first into the road.
Multiple Indigenous groups circulated messages about Thanksgiving on social media Thursday.
NDN Collective said that "as Indigenous peoples, we reject colonial holidays rooted in the genocidal erasure of our existence. We demand #LANDBACK to reclaim sovereignty, repair ties with Mother Earth, and protect Indigenous ways of life—honoring them for generations to come."
The Indigenous Environmental Network similarly
highlighted that "'Thanksgiving' is a white-washed holiday designed to conceal its true origins of violence, genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation."
"We must re-evaluate what we've been taught about the history of this land and recognize that genocide, extraction, and exploitation of our lands and communities continue today," the group argued.
Brenda Beyal, an enrolled member of the Diné Nation and program coordinator of the Brigham Young University ARTS Partnership's Native American Curriculum Initiative, wrote about the history of Thanksgiving on Wednesday for The Salt Lake Tribune.
"Our history books mark 'the first Thanksgiving' in 1621 when at least 90 Wampanoag men, led by Massasoit, walked in on a Puritan harvest feast," Beyal detailed. "Approximately 150 years later, all 13 colonies celebrated a day of solemn Thanksgiving to celebrate the win of the Battle of Saratoga in December of 1777. [U.S. President] George Washington called for a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789 to give gratitude for the end of the Revolutionary War."
"Then, in 1863, [President] Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday to be held in November of every year," she continued. "During the same year that Lincoln canonized Thanksgiving, the Shoshone experienced the worst slaughter of Native Americans in U.S. history while winter camped on the Boa Ogoi (Bear River) near what is now Preston, Idaho. More than 400 men, women and children were massacred."
"This Thursday, my family and I will gather for a meal of thanksgiving. I have extended an invitation to whomever needs a place to rest, feast, and give gratitude. There is room at my table," she explained. "Ultimately, it is my hope that we as a nation can continue to consecrate days of remembrance, where we can both celebrate and mourn, acknowledge and repair, and find ways to be thankful, even with a wounded heart."
Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, Diné/Dakota writer Jacqueline Keeler addressed the future under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who won another term in the White House this month.
"In my book Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands, which was published after Trump's first term, I delved into the settler colonial mindset that the Pilgrims landed with on these shores, and contrasted it with the perspective of the Indigenous people of the United States," Keeler noted.
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Estes examined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's battle against the climate-wrecking Dakota Access Pipeline. "I actually look at a physical map that was handed out to water protectors who came to the camp. And on that map there was, you know, where to find food, where to find the clinics," he said. "To me, that provided, you know, a kind of interesting parallel to the world that surrounded the camps."
"You had the North Dakota National Guard, the world of cops, the world of the militarized sort of police state. And in the camps themselves you had sort of the primordial sort of beginnings of what a world premised on Indigenous justice might look like. And in that world, you know, everyone got free food. There was a place for everyone," Estes noted. "The housing... obviously, was transient housing and teepees and things like that, but then also there was health clinics to provide healthcare, alternative forms of healthcare, to everyone. And so, if we look at that, it's housing, education—all for free, right?—a strong sense of community."
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But one day after the deal went into effect, an Associated Press correspondent in northern Israel reported that they heard artillery strikes across the border in Lebanon as well as Israeli drones.
On Thursday morning, Israeli tanks hit the southern Lebanese towns of Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, Khiyam, and Taybe, according to Lebanese state media and security sources, injuring at least two people.
All the areas lie within two kilometers (1.24 miles) of the Lebanon-Israel border.
Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Lebanese Parliament who is part of the Hezbollah March 8 alliance, said Israel had attacked civilians who were "returning to the border villages."
"There are violations today by Israel, even in this form," he told reporters.
Thousands of Lebanese people began returning to their homes in the southern part of the country after the cease-fire deal went into effect, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) should not allow civilians back into southern villages. His order contradicted a statement by Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, who led cease-fire negotiations and said Wednesday that residents could return home.
Israel imposed a last-minute curfew on Wednesday night, prohibiting Lebanese citizens from crossing into the south overnight.
The IDF then accused Hezbollah of violating the cease-fire, announcing on Thursday: "Over the past hour, several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the cease-fire. The IDF opened fire toward them."
Drop Site Newsnoted that the deal bars Hezbollah from carrying out "any operations" against Israel but only prohibits Israel from conducting "offensive" attacks in Lebanon.
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