Abdel-Muhti, who is active in the Palestine Education Committee, has helped organize recent protests in front of the Israeli consulate here. He was also producing a program on WBAI radio that featured Palestinian leaders from the occupied territories speaking on the resistance to Tel Aviv’s war on the Palestinian people.

About three weeks before Abdel-Muhti’s arrest, while he was speaking on a radio program, about 10 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents and New York city cops barged into his apartment in Corona, Queens. His roommate, Bernie McFall, says the cops threatened to throw him out the window of his 14th-floor apartment if he tried to block their search of computer files and phone directories.

At 6:30 a.m. on April 26, four cops in civilian clothes--three New York police detectives and an INS agent--along with a group of uniformed city cops, showed up at Abdel-Muhti’s Lefrak City apartment. McFall said cops aggressively banged on the door demanding to question him about Sep tember 11. He asked if they had a warrant; they replied that they had none and did not need one. The cops claimed they believed there were weapons and explosives in the apartment.  
 
Threaten to break down door
When the police threatened to break down the door and were let in, they demanded to see Abdel-Muhti’s identification. They announced he was under arrest for being in the country illegally, said he would be deported, and took him in handcuffs without bothering to search the apartment. According to his attorney, Gilma Camargo, of the American Association of Jurists, INS agents said one of the reasons for his arrest was his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

That same afternoon a press conference was held to protest the arrest. Speakers included his 23-year-old son Tarek Abdel-Muhti and McFall, both of whom witnessed the arrest. The Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants has been supporting the effort to free him.

Abdel-Muhti was taken to INS offices and interrogated. After his attorney showed up to ask what the charges were, an immigration agent told her that based on the alleged expiration of a work permit they had a deportation order against him since 1995, a document the INS has yet to show his lawyer. Abdel-Muhti was then locked up in Middlesex County jail in New Jersey. Later that day he reported by phone that U.S. agents had subjected him to constant interrogation, had denied him food, and had beaten him. They told him he would be released if he agreed to provide U.S. authorities with information on his contacts in Palestine and the Arab community in the United States, but threatened that if he did not collaborate he would be deported and turned over to Israeli intelligence police.

Supporters of Abdel-Muhti note that the involvement of the New York cops in the arrest underscores the shift in the city government’s official position that its police department will not aid the INS in reporting or arresting people on immigration charges. A 1985 executive order bars the local police from asking immigrants about their status, much less reporting them or helping the INS detain them.

In early April U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft announced that the Justice Department was considering changing its policy in order to deputize local police as INS agents, allowing them to make arrests solely for civil violations of immigration law. The 1996 immigration law signed by President William Clinton authorized such federal arrangements with local and state police, but until recently they were not official policy in most areas.

The Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants is asking that defenders of Abdel-Muhti contact the INS district director in New Jersey, Andrea Quarantillo, and demand his immediate release: tel. (973) 645-4421, fax (973) 297-4848.  
 
 
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