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INS Coverage
become one of the most important
holding stations for special interest
detainees.
As the paper’s immigration reporter,
I began covering the story before its
local relevance became clear. In early
October 2001, I spent two days in
Newark’s immigration court, which is
part of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Armed guards lined the hallways. Shackled,
special interest detainees were
brought up one by one. The court
docket, which is posted publicly, did
not include their names. In a directive
written on September 21, 2001, U.S.
Chief Immigration Judge Michael J.
Creppy had ordered judges to close all
proceedings involving special interest
cases to the press and public, including
family members and friends. He
further ordered court administrators
to neither confirm nor deny information
about the hearings.
During my two days at the immigration
court, I didn’t even try to enter a
courtroom. However, through conversations
with attorneys, family members,
and an interpreter, I realized that
Arabs were being rounded up as part of
the September 11 investigation. Most
special interest detainees were Arab,
South Asian, or Turkish men, Justice
Department figures show.
The first special interest detainee I
interviewed was Mohammad al-Raqqad,
a 37-year-old Jordanian who was arrested
on September 13, 2001. Through
his lawyer, I asked him to call me collect
from jail. Raqqad was eager to find
anyone who could help him get back to
his wife and children in Jordan. An
immigration judge had granted him a
“voluntary departure” order, allowing
him to fly home at his own expense.
But he hadn’t received final clearance
from the FBI, so he was stuck in jail.
“They finish the investigation with me.
Why [do] they hold me in the jail?”
Raqqad asked in mid-November, two
months prior to his release. We published
a profile of Raqqad, explaining
his frustration at his seemingly indefinite
jail stay and conveying that, despite
his experience, he still wanted to
move his family to the United States
some day.
Raqqad called me again when he
Nael al-Fawair, a Jordanian national, says he came to America because he believed he
would be living in a free democratic society. After spending months in the Hudson
County Correctional Center in Kearny, he says he wants to go back to Jordan and never
return because his faith in the U.S. government to protect his rights has completely
vanished. Photo by Ryan Mercer/Herald News.
and six other INS detainees staged a
hunger strike to protest their departure
delays. All seven hunger strikers
were Muslim. We wrote about their
protest, and as Raqqad’s detention wore
on, I mentioned his plight in other INSrelated
articles. Twice the INS denied
my request to personally interview him.
By the time the agency granted me
permission, he had been told he would
fly home in a few days. When he got to
Jordan, Raqqad called to thank me for
publicizing his case. He also made his
wife, whose English was limited, thank
me over the phone.
The only lengthy face-to-face interview
I did with a special interest detainee
was with Nael al-Fawair, a 36-
year-old Jordanian who had been
transferred to INS custody after a traffic
stop. Fawair was married to a U.S.
citizen, but had been deported before.
The INS allowed a photographer and
me to meet with Fawair in a designated,
nondescript room. An INS
spokesman asked us not to take any
pictures of the detainees behind bars.
Fawair was angry that he had been in
jail for nearly three months after agreeing
to deportation, which he claimed
he was coerced to do. He said that FBI
agents did not question him once during
his detention.
This Reporter Joins a Lawsuit
In late January, the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) of New Jersey sued
Hudson and Passaic counties in state
court for keeping the names of INS
detainees secret. The company that
owns our newspaper, North Jersey
Media Group, filed an amicus brief in
the case. About this same time, the
ACLU, four Michigan papers and Rep.
John Conyers filed suit in federal court
in Detroit; in that case, the plaintiffs
challenged the government’s efforts to
keep secret the deportation hearings
of Rabih Haddad, a cofounder of an
Islamic charity that the government
shut down in December 2001. [See
story by Herschel Fink about this case
on page 7.] An ACLU official asked me
if the Herald News would be willing to
help mount a similar challenge in New
Jersey. Our company was willing. But I
needed to document my thwarted attempts
to attend special interest hearings.
10 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002