The US government equated pro-Palestinian activism with terrorism and pursued deportation.

Evidence

The case of the Los Angeles Eight put a spotlight on the government’s association of Arabs with terrorism. Eight political activists, seven of whom were Palestinian, were placed under surveillance for three years, from 1987 to 1990, as part of an antiterrorism investigation. Their fund-raising and activism for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attracted the attention of the US government, which equated pro-Palestinian activism with terrorism. The government sought to deport the Palestinian activists pursuant to the McCarran-Walter Act, which criminalizes association with any organization that “advocated for world Communism.” This was the same law used to deport Jewish leftists during the era of McCarthyism. After two decades of litigation, an immigration judge ruled in 2007 that the US government had violated the defendants’ constitutional rights. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reading on McCarthy-era deportation of Jewish leftists and the broader pattern of using anti-Communist laws against non-Communist dissent.