• Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild Present:  INS Special Registration, Secret Hearings & Indefinite Detentions: What’s Next?

• Council Once Again Mobilizing Lawyers to Offer Free Legal Services for Individuals Targeted For FBI Interviews 

Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild Present:

INS Special Registration, Secret Hearings & Indefinite Detentions: What’s Next?

In the wake of 9/11 individuals from predominantly Muslim countries have been subjected to generalized suspicion and drastic infringements of their rights. The latest measure is the INS Special Registration program, under which adult men with non-immigrant visas from 25 countries are required to register with the INS and submit to interrogations, fingerprinting, and photographing. Other immigrant communities are feeling the pressure of post-9/11 measures as well, as Chicago-area immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America have been fired from service-sector jobs as ‘security risks.’ Many bar organizations have objected to these measures, and protests have been held in cities around the country, including Chicago. Susan Compernolle will explain the workings of this program as it is being implemented, including information attorneys need in order to advise their clients, and Susan Gzesh will provide a critique of INS practice in the wake of 9/11 from the perspective of international human rights law. This forum will also address the climate of fear this has provoked in the immigrant communities affected.

5:30 p.m., Monday, March 31, 2003

Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn, Chicago

(The Program is Free to Council Members)

Susan Compernolle is a principal in the law firm Rubman & Compernolle. She and her partner David Rubman practice immigration law exclusively. She is the past chair of the Chicago Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and serves on the national liaison with the Executive Office for Immigration Review (the Board of Immigration Appeals and Office of the Immigration Judge). She is also active in the National Lawyers Guild, and served on the Steering Committee of the National Immigration Project of the NLG from 1994 to 2002.

Susan Gzesh is the Director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago and a Lecturer in the Law School. She is a former chairperson of the National Lawyers Guild National Immigration Project and former chair of the Board of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Among her projects at the University, she directs an annual institute on migration, development, and human rights for academics and activists from the U.S., Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Co-sponsors: Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers; Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc.; DePaul College of Law Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Muslim Bar Association

Council Once Again Mobilizing Lawyers to Offer Free Legal Services for Individuals Targeted For FBI Interviews 

The Chicago Council of Lawyers has become part of a Chicago-area coalition of legal organizations assembled by the ACLU of Illinois to open a telephone hotline and to mobilize volunteer lawyers offering free legal services for Iraqi Americans and Iraqi immigrants designated for questioning by the U.S.Department of Justice. Recent media reports indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation – working in connection with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Homeland Security Department – plans to utilize as many as 5,000 federal agents across the nation as part of a plan to question more than 10,000 Iraqis living in the United States.

It is the goal of this coalition to provide pro bono legal assistance to those who request it. The coalition will provide lawyers who will offer legal services pro bono to persons contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or other law enforcement agencies acting on behalf of the federal government, in connection with the nationwide investigation.

The Council and the ACLU in late 2001 also cooperated in identifying and training volunteer lawyers to provide free legal services when the Justice Department attempted to interview five thousand (5,000) persons – all men ages 18 to 33, primarily from Middle Eastern nations – who entered the United States on non-immigrant visas.

I am asking you as a member or a friend of the Chicago Council of Lawyers to volunteer your time for this effort.  If you are interested in volunteering or want more information, please contact me by replying to this email (malcolmrich@chicagocouncil.org) or by phone at 312-427-0713.

Individuals designated for an interview by the FBI who wish to contact a volunteer lawyer can call the ACLU of Illinois hotline at (800) 572-1092.