Eva, I don’t have a cite, but news reports here in Canada indicate that he was deported under a special national security provision, not the usual immigration laws. That power can only be exercised if authorised by fairly high-ranking officials in the Justice Department. I believe the official who signed it had a rank something like Assistant Attorney General.
As for how he came to the attention of authorities if he was just transferring - well, isn’t that what the security watch lists are all about, just like those planes that were turned back at Christmas time? This wasn’t an immigration matter at all - it was supposedly national security.
Maybe so, but from his description it sounds like he was waiting in the regular information line, not that the Feds snatched him when he walked off the plane.
As for who needs to sign off on a deportation like that, I’ll do some poking around at work this week re: required judicial review, national security, and the Convention Against Torture. The interrelationship between these items under case law is still very much under debate.
Are you sure? I’m not certain how this works, but the last time I changed planes in the US (in 1999), I definitely had to show my ID to someone in uniform, who resembled a customs officer and who typed it into their computer.
At the moment, my money is on Arar being innocent, but that is beside the point. We have a Canadian citizen here being sent off for the purpose of further interogation through torture pure and simple. No respect for Canada here, and no respect for human rights. For Ashcroft to say that they got assurances that there would be no torture is a cruel joke. It underscores his expectation of torture and explains why the more expensive Syrian trip won out over a quick trip to Canada. Claims of Canadian permission, (from whom, the cops ?) are ridiculous.
People that know me, know that I’m generally a US government supporter on the war on terrorism, but in my books Ashcroft should be fired outright and we need to find out if Canadian officials can be implicated.
Flights to and from Canada are handled differently from all other international flights in the U.S. In particular, they generally depart from the domestic terminals, like flights within the U.S. So Arar would have had to go through U.S. Immigration at the international terminal (or area) before getting on a flight back to Montreal.
Not quite. From Toronto and other large airports in Canada, transborder flights direct to the US are cleared by US customs and immigration on the ground in Canada. They are effectively US domestic flights once they leave the ground, and have a much greater choice of destinations since they do not need custom and immigration services on arrival. There are many commuter-type airlines out of Toronto going to smaller cities all over the US north east.
Last year, I was ‘pre-cleared’ in Toronto when going to Cincinnati. When coming back, the plane landed in Toronto and I had to go through Canadian customs and immigration as usual.
Now, if Arar was just changing planes, he should have remained in the transit area and never have had to pass through US Immigration… but I have heard that the US does not operate transit areas outside their immigration control at their airports: everyone touching US soil must encounter US immigration, even if they are merely traveling on and have no intention of actually visiting the US! Eva Luna, is this true? If so, this explains how they got Arar.
When I went from Canada to Europe, I changed planes in Amsterdam and did not encounter immigration controls intil the end of the journey in Helsinki.
I agree, the Arar case stinks, and not just on the US side of the border. Headlines last week were abaout the federal police* raiding the home of a journalist who wrote about the story in the Ottawa Citizen last novenber.
[sub]*the Gendarmerie Royaux Canadien, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the famous Mounties[/sub]
I’m not sure, never having had to take a connecting domestic flight after arriving in the U.S. from abroad; I’ve always left the airport right after my initial arrival from abroad. That might be the case in some airports, maybe smaller ones that don’t have a whole international terminal. and I honestly can’t remember the layout of JFK (it’s been almost 9 years since I arrived there from abroad). Maybe someone who’s done this recently can clarify. Since the recent abolition of the Transit Without Visa program, though, this might now be the case.
Basically, it meant that if your nationality meant that you would normally need a visitor visa to enter the U.S., but you were only changing flights and didn’t need to leave the airport, you were exempt from the visa requirement.
I am glad to say that the Canadian federal government has bowed to pressure and is going to conduct an inquiry into who said what to the US immigration authorities.
(Anecdotally: when I flew through the US I had to go through some kind of procedure where my passport was checked - and that was before 9/11 - I had the dubious pleasure of spending the night in Miami Airport during the Florida Vote, watching CNN. Ugh.)
I am thrilled that there will be an inquiry, but utterly cynical about the timing.
Now Paul Martin can have an election without everyone asking him ‘What about the inquiry?’ - but the results of said inquiry won’t be out until well after the election. Best of both worlds, he gets.
I haven’t made a connecting flight since 1996. We flew from Paris to Chicago (O’Hare) direct then caught a connecting flight to home in Michigan. We cleared US Customs at O’Hare.