News & Commentary

One Saturday afternoon in 2011, my wife and daughter were out, and I was on my front steps, talking on the phone with my sister. Three law enforcement cars drove up, and I told my sister, “Something must be going on.” Suddenly, agents got out and started running toward me. They said, “Drop the phone. Get on your belly. Put your hands behind your back!” They handcuffed me and drove me away. Even though I had been a legal permanent resident of the United States for about 50 years and served in the

On opening day of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., I crossed the threshold of this impressive edifice with a memory deeply embedded in my psyche. Many years ago, I visited West Africa for an extended stay and had the oppo

On November 30th, the ACLU will be in the Supreme Court to argue a case that will decide the fate of thousands of people languishing in immigration prisons across the United States. Jennings v. Rodriguez asks a basic question: Can the federal government lock you up, for months or years, without the due process of a hearing to decide if your imprisonment is even justified? Shockingly, in much of the country, the answer is yes if you’re an immigrant — even if courts ultimat

Until 40 years ago, American presidents regularly used surveillance powers for their own political ends. Watergate, of course, was perhaps the best-known example of such activity — and not coincidentally, it was also perhaps the last. In the wake of President Richard Nixon’s abuses of individual rights and government resources to enact political vengeance, a shocked American public demanded that Congress ensure that the president’s crimes could not be repeated. In 1976, in a document known as the Church Committee Report (named after Democratic senator Frank Church), the

My mother was seven years old when she and her family were evacuated from the West Coast and forced to live in an Army barrack behind barbed wire in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Born in Los Angeles, she had been taught in school to be a proud and loyal America

In a 4-minute SoundCloud interview with the Indigenous Environmental Network, Angela Bibens describes the devastating effects of tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, mace, and water cannons used on 400 peaceful protestors in North Dakota by local police in the last 48 hours. The confrontation arose as protestors attempted to move two burned trucks off Backwater Bridge just north of the Oceti Sakowin "Water Protector" Camp, which had blocked the main route to the city of Bismarck and delayed emergency services. According to Bibens, several demonstrators suffered seizures, broken ligaments, loss of bowel control, and, in some case

Earlier this month, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department briefed the public via Facebook on the scope of law enforcement presence that was helping confront protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock.  The help was made possible by a bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton about 20 years ago, which c

The U.S. agency responsible for managing the federal prison system sent personnel to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan where detainees were tortured during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and covered its involvement up, according to emails obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.  As a result of our lawsuit, which we agreed to end yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed not only that

This piece was originally published at Just Security on November 21, 2016.  As a candidate, Donald Trump notoriously called for a ban on the entrance of all Muslims, a