High court rejects dispute over closed deportation hearings

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court gave the Bush administration a major legal victory in the war on terrorism Tuesday, rejecting a challenge to secret deportation hearings held for hundreds of foreigners detained after the Sept. 11 attacks.

After the attacks two years ago, the government ordered all immigration hearings closed if the foreigners were deemed "special interest" cases because of possible connections to terrorism. The government alone decides if a case is of special interest.

The court turned aside an appeal from New Jersey newspapers seeking information about the detainees, but attorneys for the newspapers said they still hoped the administration would change its policy. The Supreme Court has been told the policy is being reviewed and probably will be revised.

The court's refusal to intervene was the third such victory for the government in Sept. 11 cases.

In March, the court turned back an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union over the government's surveillance powers, which were bolstered by the USA Patriot Act passed by Congress after the attacks. And earlier this month, justices rejected an appeal over the detention of hundreds of U.S. prisoners picked up in Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without charges or access to lawyers.

"It shows the court is not eager to jump into the civil liberties-national security issue, at least until it perceives it has to. It's content to see the government win," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

Immigration hearings generally are open. A federal judge in New Jersey ruled the government should be able to close them only if individual circumstances warranted that. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia disagreed and upheld the government policy.

In a separate case testing the same policy, an appeals court in Cincinnati ruled the other way. Chemerinsky said it was surprising the Supreme Court passed up a chance to settle the conflict.

Lawyers for the newspapers argued to the court that the public deserves to know "how, and how fairly, its government uses the power of detention and deportation."

"That is especially true at this moment, when the government itself has expressly drawn a link between deportation proceedings and the war on terrorism and has frequently cited the number of non-citizens it has detained as evidence of the investigation's progress," they told justices.

The Bush administration defended the policy of closed hearings as a security precaution. Public disclosure of information about how and why some foreigners were picked up would give clues about what the government knows about terrorist cells or plots, and what it doesn't know, Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in a court filing.

Moreover, most of the deportation hearings in question already are complete, Olson said. About 760 detainees were designated as special interest and 505 of them have been deported, he told the court.

Many of the immigrants were apprehended in New York and New Jersey.

Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who represented the newspapers, said the court's refusal to hear the case does not end the pressure on the government to abolish the policy.

"When someone's liberty is at stake, we should not be conducting the hearing in secret," he said.

There are other Sept. 11 cases that probably will make it to the Supreme Court, including several involving the rights of people held in America in connection with terrorism investigations as "enemy combatants."

The case is North Jersey Media Group v. Ashcroft, 02-1289.

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On the Net:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/02-1289.htm

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov