Home » About » Newsletters » January 2002
"Volunteer Attorneys Offer Free Legal Advice to People Questioned in State and Federal Terrorism Investigations"
Shortly after the federal government announced plans to interrogate 5,000 non-citizens, the ACLU of Florida joined with Muslim advocates and immigration attorneys to launch a toll-free legal hotline to provide legal assistance to individuals in Florida who were questioned by officials as part of state and federal investigations related to the September 11th terrorist attacks.
The ACLU of Florida combined efforts with the Florida affiliates of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA) and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) to reach out to those who were sought for interviews and to identify attorneys to provide free legal representation. The groups launched the toll-free hotline on December 8. Similar hotlines were also set up by the New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan and Oregon ACLU affiliates.
A team of volunteer lawyers and translators worked around the clock to inform people about their constitutional rights and provide them with Arabic translators. Aside from volunteering to counsel everyone who called the hotline, the lawyers also were available to accompany the men to their interviews.
The ACLU and its partners are concerned that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Justice Department are interrogating individuals because of their ethnicity without reason to believe that the specific individuals to be interviewed have information about terrorist activities. Questions to be asked (as outlined in Justice Department guidelines for interviewers) go beyond those seeking factual information and include inquiries about people's political beliefs and the political beliefs of family members and friends.
The ACLU believes that the FDLE and Justice Department interviews violate core constitutional principles because of their "sweep, intrusiveness, and discriminatory nature."
The ACLU of Florida is also distributing brochures in English, Spanish and Arabic advising people about their rights when stopped or questioned by the FBI, police or INS officials.
The pamphlets ? entitled, "Know Your Rights What to Do If You're Stopped by the Police, the FBI, the INS or the Customs Service" ? answer the vast majority of questions that have been raised about stops, questioning, searches, and the rights of non-citizens. The brochures can be obtained by writing to: Alessandra Soler, Public Education Director, ACLU of Florida, 4500 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 340, Miami, Florida 33137.
Or they can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat/PDF format from the ACLU by clicking on the following links:
