Word: namo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Yale law students and their professor who fought to get the Haitian refugees into America. Goldstein intersperses this story with an account of the harrowing journey of Yvonne Pascal, a young pro-democracy activist who escaped torture in her homeland only to find herself fenced in on Guantánamo. “Storming the Court” is a fascinating legal drama—a sort of modern “Amistad...
President George H.W. Bush feared the political ramifications of opening the borders to a flood of Haitians, especially after a number of them tested HIV-positive. After a lower court initially blocked him from sending the refugees back, Bush held them at Guantánamo. In the meantime, the federal appellate court in Atlanta ruled that the Haitians had no protection under American law because, at Guantánamo, they were outside the U.S. At the naval base, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials classified many of the escapees as “economic...
Over the next few months, Johnson would repeatedly side with the Yale team. Johnson rejected the idea that the Constitution does not extend to Guantánamo, observing that the Haitians were on territory under the “complete jurisdiction and control” of the U.S. government. His arguments eerily presage those that would be made almost 15 years later to contest the holding of enemy combatants without charges...
...legal battles for Koh and his students, however, were far from over. Bush changed tactics, and the Coast Guard started sending Haitians home without stopping at Guantánamo. In a defeat for the Yale team, the Supreme Court eventually upheld the Bush policy. Koh also had to juggle a separate case before Johnson that urged the release of the remaining HIV-positive refugees, including Pascal, from the squalid conditions on the naval base...
...also makes it easy to develop emotional attachments with the students—who are alternately discouraged, distraught, and joyous, but always passionate—and with Pascal, who leads a hunger strike on Guantánamo and represents the other refugees in demanding respect and freedom...