January 18, 2003

Press Release from Committee for the Release of
Farouk Abdel-Muhti

INS Attempts to Break Hunger Strike in Passaic Jail

NEW YORK, Jan. 18--As of noon today, six Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detainees held in the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey, were continuing their four-day old hunger strike despite INS efforts to intimidate them. The detainees, who are Muslims being held without charges pending deportation, are refusing food to protest their detention and conditions at the Passaic facility.

Five detainees have accepted the INS's offer of transfer to the Hudson County Jail, also in New Jersey, but INS officials insist that they must end their strike before they are transferred. INS spokesperson Kerry Gill characterized the hunger strike as "disruptive behavior."

Meanwhile, the INS is attempting to intimidate the sixth hunger striker, New York-based Palestinian activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti, with threats to bring criminal charges. On Jan. 16 Wilfredo Diaz of the New York INS regional office served Abdel-Muhti with a "first warning for failure to depart." The document threatened him with up to four years in prison for his alleged refusal to cooperate with his deportation. Abdel-Muhti said he would not sign the document without consulting his attorney.

On Jan. 17 Deportation Officer Frantz Jeudi visited Abdel-Muhti and made a second attempt to get the detainee's signature, again without the advice of counsel. When Abdel-Muhti insisted on his constitutional rights, Jeudi became abusive and said that if Abdel- Muhti refused, "you will lose everything."

The INS may be trying to interfere with a habeas corpus petition Abdel-Muhti filed on Nov. 6 charging that he had been held unlawfully beyond the six-month period the Supreme Court set as a standard in the 2001 Zadvydas case. Abdel-Muhti does not wish to leave the US, where he has lived for more than 25 years, but he and his legal team insist they have cooperated fully with efforts to deport him. Abdel-Muhti is a stateless Palestinian; the INS has failed in several efforts to deport him since the 1970s because no country would accept him.

"The INS is playing hardball by saying it won't even transfer the detainees until they end the hunger strike," said Jane Guskin of the New York-based Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI). "But it's the INS that provoked this strike in the first place. They know that conditions in Passaic are below even their own low standards. Maybe they hope the detainees will get so desperate they'll give up on their cases. This time they pushed a group of detainees to the point where they're willing to risk their health, even their lives. In Farouk's case and many others, the INS is flaunting the law by refusing to abide by the Zadvydas decision. The INS needs to stop criticizing the detainees for taking this desperate measure and start obeying the law."

Immigrant rights advocates say the INS is probably worried that the Passaic strikers may find imitators among the thousands of other INS detainees held in prisons around the country without criminal charges. A group of 16 INS detainees won their demands for improved conditions in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Virginia by staging a three-day hunger strike Dec. 2-4.

Contact: David L. Wilson, 212-674-9499
nicadlw@earthlink.net
freefarouk@yahoo.com