9/11

It's amazing how symbols work, isn't it? A few small strokes of the pen can speak a whole word, a whole sentence, a library. 311, a music group. 411, cool lingo for "information." 7-11, slurpees, Big Eats, and loiterers. Then there's 9/11.

Yesterday whenever I'd see the date on my phone, I'd think, wow it's almost 9/11. And today every time I saw the date on my phone I felt a chill. One thing everyone can agree on is that it was a day that changed the world.

Maybe it's because I'm an immigration lawyer with a largely Muslim clientele. Or my partner is Ashraf Nubani, a lawyer best known for his role in the high-profile terrorism cases in the Eastern District of Virginia. (My partner was featured in a full-length article in a special September issue of the American Bar Association Law Journal, entitled, "The Go-To Lawyer of 'Northern Virginiastan') But as I see civil liberties erode it makes me think they won, at least something. And that disturbs me.

I'm no card-carrying member of the ACLU. But I am a father. And all of a sudden I find myself caring what the world will be like in 50 years. I grew up loving the idea of freedom, and as i got older I realized how little of it is freely available around the world. On a cops show once they showed a traffic stop in the former Soviet Union, and in their zeal to display law enforcement authority, the announcer proudly exclaimed in a voice-over of a scene where a driver was being dragged out of his vehicle, "In the Soviet Union, the cops can pull you over for any reason at all." Small, crappy example, but you get the point. So when I see it eroding in my own country, it disturbs me. No actually, I hate it.

In the immigration context I see the powers that be use every ounce of their greatly expanded authority to break up families, sometimes with a ghastly sort of enjoyment. Once at immigration court I saw a mother with two small children appear at her husband's master calendar hearing, brought into court in an orange jumpsuit and shackled like a criminal. All because of "mandatory detention" under INA 236 that robs even an immigration judge from having jurisdiction to make a bond redetermination. As they let the tall black man away one of the kids started running after him just saying "Daddy, Daddy." He couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 years old. And the ICE officer grabs the kid by the arm and sharply tells him he can't go any further. I mean, hey, this is a matter of national security. The scene brought tears to my eyes as I thought of how I would feel if my son ran after me only to be held back by some rent-a-cop ICE officer. I never practiced law before 9/11 but I hear tell, it used to not be like this.

It's a question that has been asked by all since that fateful day: What will be left to protect? With every twisting of the law for political ends, legal gamesmanship, every bit of bought testimony, selective enforcement, summary deportation, concocted charge, and denial of deserved relief, I see what's left, dwindling away, and the judge's hands apparently tied because no one wants to be the judge who dared question national security in...what's the catch phrase? this post-9/11 world.