The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Statement on Civil Liberties Restoration Act

Speech by Wade Henderson on June 16, 2004.

Good afternoon. I am Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation's oldest, largest and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. I want to thank NAPALC and the other organizations here today for putting this call together, and I'm also grateful to Senator Kennedy, Congressman Berman and the other sponsors of the Civil Liberties Restoration Act (CLRA) for their leadership.

LCCR strongly supports the CLRA because we believe that the Constitutional guarantees of civil rights and liberties and due process of law should be measured with a single yardstick, even in times of crisis, and that the failure to live up to this principle has often had dire consequences for the most vulnerable members of our society – immigrants and citizens alike.

We all know, of course, that since the 9/11 tragedy, our nation has been rightly consumed with preventing another terrorist incident. The fear of terrorism is real and should not be glibly dismissed. However, adopting strategies that unfairly demonize non-citizens and, at the same time, are ineffective in preventing terrorism or advancing national security are simply a recipe for disaster.

One need only look to earlier periods of American history for valuable lessons on the collision between civil rights and false security claims. Incidents like the Palmer Raids in the 1920s during the Red Scare, and the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II serve to remind us how overreactions in times of crisis can have drastic implications for the civil rights of people who are sometimes not perceived as being fully "American." When we see the same patterns today, in the mass roundups, secret hearings and unchecked surveillance powers that have followed the September 11 attacks, I think we all once again have reason to be concerned.

The consequences of this manufactured hysteria has fed into the scapegoating of many Arab Americans, Muslims, South Asians and some immigrant groups that has resulted in a spike of hate crime activity and abuses of their civil rights. The national security rationale has been stretched so far that it is now even used as a pretext for discriminatory immigration detention policies that are applied against Haitians who try to seek asylum here.

The crossover consequences for citizens when we compromise civil rights and liberties should also be noted. For example, before 9/11, our nation was making a considerable amount of progress on efforts to combat racial and ethnic profiling. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, racial profiling has once again been falsely viewed by some as a legitimate law enforcement tool.

Our experiences so far, whether through law enforcement or through other instances of discrimination on airlines and elsewhere, has demonstrated just how flawed this approach is. It is just as wrong now – not to mention ineffective – as it was before September 11 to single out an entire group for the actions of a few. If violations of civil rights and liberties are considered permissible in the name of fighting terrorism, it sets a dangerous precedent that may soon haunt us when it comes to other types of law enforcement efforts such as the war on drugs or violent crime.

The rights of all Americans are compromised when our nation fails to live up to our fundamental values. It's time for Congress to restore a proper balance between our need for national security and our longstanding commitment to civil rights, which is why the Leadership Conference urges Congress to pass the CLRA into law. Thank you.