Immigration courts allowed secret evidence in deportation cases, always against Arab or Muslim defendants.

Evidence

Then, in the 1990s, immigration courts expanded their use of “secret evidence” in key deportation cases. Since the Constitution guarantees people the right to confront the evidence against them, including the right to examine exculpatory information, evidence cannot be kept secret from defendants (except perhaps in extraordinary circumstances). But immigration courts are not held to the same standard, and the INS pursued at least two dozen deportation cases based on “secret evidence” in this period. Although it claimed it was not engaged in selectively prosecuting Arab or Muslim immigrants, the agency was unable to name a single “secret evidence” case that didn’t involve an Arab or a Muslim. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 984

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the surveillance-and-deportation machinery that recurs throughout this book, and to the broader literature on post-9/11 civil liberties erosion.