It flies in the face of American values. During hearings before the Immigrations and Claims subcommittee on February 10, many representatives expressed surprise that the American government would so severely compromise its due process standards in dealing with non-citizens. Furthermore, those hearings cast light on the constitutional violations at issue. Even the Department of Justice representative conceded that the Fifth Amendment is relevant to these cases. In that case, the guarantee that no person may be deprived of liberty without due process of law should apply equally to those who are not yet American citizens.
Secret evidence threatens more than a few individuals or families.
Indeed, for six million American Muslims, the government's use of secret evidence leads many to question whether the due process rights enshrined in our constitution really apply to all within our country. The use of secret evidence makes American Muslims think twice before speaking out, engaging in politics, or otherwise exercising their First Amendment rights. Perceived as singling out Muslim activists in the United States, secret evidence threatens to chill everyone's right to free speech. For many Muslims, that basic sense of security was strained severely in 1995, when in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, American Muslims were victimized amid hysteria that Middle Eastern Muslims had committed that act of violence. Within one month of the attack, CAIR issued a report, called A Rush to Judgment, detailing more than 200 incidents of anti-Muslim threats, harassment, stereotyping, property damage and physical assaults resulting from unfounded links between Muslims and the terrorist attack on the Murrah Federal Building.