While all people are clearly subject to the act, and its increased powers of surveillance, immigrant communities are especially targeted. For example, the act allowed Attorney General John Ashcroft to "Special Register" thousands of immigrant men with the Department of Homeland Security based on their country of origin. Thousands of non-citizens, primarily those from Muslim and Arab countries, but also Latinos, South Asians, Israelis and others have been deported without due process.
Thousands of men, mostly of Arab and South Asian origin, have been held in federal custody, often without being charged of a crime. The government has disregarded court orders to release the names of those imprisoned. Finally, immigration court hearings of many of those detainees have been closed to the press and the public.
Yet, even with all of these powers, it is unclear that the act has had any beneficial effect on the war against terrorism. Interrogating and detaining thousands of people is not an effective means of finding those few who are actually involved in terrorism, particularly because these mass detentions create a climate of fear and non-cooperation between immigrant communities and the government.
The principle of equal rights for citizens and non-citizens alike permeates Jewish tradition as well as the American legal tradition. Thus, as citizens fully integrated into the fabric of this country, Jews have a unique responsibility as inheritors of an immigrant history to ensure that the rights of non-citizens are respected today.
Certainly, Jews have a traditional appreciation for, and interest in, maintaining the civil liberties that have allowed us to thrive in this country. The great strength of America's governmental system is that it provides its inhabitants with inalienable individual rights, including the right to due process, the right to be punished in proportion to the crime committed, and the right not to be imprisoned without cause.
These modern political rights derive at least part of their power from an ancient moral command: "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20). This biblical directive teaches us that we must act justly in the pursuit of justice; that we must insist on both just ends and just means. The Patriot Act mocks these values.
There is a lot more to this wonderful article. Please go read the whole thing. We are turning off the comment feature to this post so we don't have to spend the day monitoring them to delete the anti-semitic nonsense we know will appear. TalkLeft has a zero-tolerance policy on anti-semitic comments and authors of same are immediately and permanently banned.
