Senators Urge Biden to Grant Palestinians Special Status to Avoid Deportation

The group says a Temporary Protected Status designation would give Palestinians the “strongest possible protection.”

By Sharon Zhang ,

Truthout

December 17, 2024

Sen. Bernie Sanders, joined by fellow senators Sen. Jeff Merkley (center) and Sen. Peter Welch, speaks at a news conference on restricting arms sales to Israel at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C.Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

Agroup of senators is urging President Joe Biden to designate the occupied Palestinian territories for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in order to grant Palestinians in the U.S. the “strongest possible protection” against moves like deportation.

In a letter effort led by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vermont), the senators say that neither Gaza nor the occupied West Bank are safe for Palestinians to return to, making the need for the TPS designation clear.

“Congress established TPS to allow noncitizens who are unable to return home safely to remain in the United States for a temporary, but extendable, period. The ongoing conflict in Gaza and the West Bank is precisely the kind of crisis Congress envisioned when crafting TPS,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter was signed by eight senators, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

In February, the Biden administration issued an 18-month Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) program for Palestinians that, similarly to TPS, allows people from certain places to remain in the U.S. and apply for employment. The administration granted the status after over 100 members of Congress and a number of rights groups wrote to Biden asking for TPS or DED for Palestinians in November 2023.

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However, the senators note that DED may not be enough to protect Palestinians amid Israel’s genocide of Gaza and escalated attacks in the occupied West Bank.

“DED may be insufficient in this instance. It derives from a president’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs and thus does not offer the strongest possible protection for this vulnerable population. TPS, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in statute and therefore more durable,” the senators explain. “It can and should be applied here to protect Palestinians present in the United States.”

The Biden administration has previously acknowledged that TPS grants stronger protections. In October, Biden granted TPS to Lebanon, despite having already granted DED to people from Lebanon in July. As immigration experts have explained, it is harder for presidents to take away TPS benefits than DED protections, while TPS also allows people who have recently reached the U.S. to receive protections.

Incoming president Donald Trump has previously threatened to implement inhumane, fascist immigration policies regarding Palestinians, including bringing back his travel ban and extending it to Gaza. He has pledged to deport supposed “pro-Hamas radicals” — meaning anyone who supports Palestinian rights, regardless of whether or not they actually support Hamas.

Republicans have also been gearing up for a huge deportation campaign. Trump has promised to revoke TPS for a number of countries, some of which have been in place for decades; Trump had tried to revoke TPS for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan during his first term, but the effort was temporarily blocked in the courts after rights groups sued.

Palestinian Families Sue US for Sending Israel Arms Despite “Gross Violations”

The U.S. “has irresponsibly embraced, ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,’” toward Israel, the lawsuit says.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

December 17, 2024

Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 7, 2024.Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images


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Agroup of Palestinians in Palestine and the U.S. have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, accusing officials of breaking domestic law by continuing to send Israel weapons despite numerous “gross violations” of human rights in the past year in Gaza and for decades beforehand.

The lawsuit was filed by five Palestinians who have lost family or face threats due to the U.S.’s weapons transfers to Israel. The lead plaintiff, under pseudonym Amal Gaza, is a teacher in Gaza who has lost 20 of her family members in the genocide and has been forcibly displaced by Israel seven times since October 2023.

Also among the plaintiffs is the executive director of Al-Haq, a West Bank human rights group, and Palestinian Americans who have lost numerous family members or risk losing family due to the U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza.

The lawsuit says that the plaintiffs’ fear over the threats to their families would be diminished if the U.S. adhered to the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. from sending assistance to foreign military units credibly accused of human rights violations.

“The State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation of Israeli [gross violations of human rights] since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023,” the lawsuit says.

It goes on to list numerous allegations of human rights violations from sources like the International Court of Justice and UN experts, saying, “Despite this overwhelming record of [gross violations of human rights] committed by Israel’s security forces, the State Department has irresponsibly embraced, ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,’ in contempt of the Leahy Law.”

“If the State Department had done its job and sanctioned U.S.-funded Israeli military units for arbitrarily detaining Palestinians for years without evidence or charge based on secret evidence, including myself, it could have prevented my suffering in prison and deprivation of liberty,” said Shawan Jabarin, the head of Al-Haq. Israeli forces have imprisoned Jabarin on no charges for six years and continue to restrict his movements.

“Instead, I continue to live in fear of imminent harm by abusive, U.S.-funded Israeli units who know that they can get away with anything because the State Department will ignore the U.S. law prohibiting aid to them,” Jabarin said.

The lawsuit is backed and advised by numerous former State Department and other U.S. government officials, including former Leahy Law vetter Josh Paul and Tim Rieser, a former foreign policy adviser for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), after whom the legislation is named, who helped draft the legislation.

“Despite years of credible reports of gross violations of human rights by Israeli defense and police units, including in the State Department’s own annual Human Rights Reports, as far as we are aware not a single unit has been denied U.S. aid under the Leahy Law,” said Rieser. “[The senator] repeatedly made the point that the Leahy Law applies equally to all countries that receive U.S.aid. While the State Department claims that to be the case, the facts show otherwise.”

It’s also backed by U.S.-based human rights group DAWN, which notes that, if the Leahy Law were implemented, “most, if not all, of Israeli security force units would be found ineligible for U.S. military assistance in light of the vast scale of Israeli security force abuses,” especially in Gaza.

The lawsuit highlights how the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum (ILVF), as experts have said, is not designed to determine whether or not Israeli units are eligible to receive assistance under U.S. law, but rather to give the Israeli military a pass no matter the violations they allegedly commit.

“The ILVF operates under a unique, complex, lengthy, high-level Leahy vetting process that is arbitrary and capricious, and is not rationally related to advancing the purpose of the Leahy Law,” the lawsuit says, pointing out that the ILVF has never once deemed a unit ineligible for assistance. “On the contrary, the ILVF appears designed to frustrate the 2019 Leahy Amendment, and avoid designating any Israeli unit ineligible for military assistance.”

Advocates have long said that the U.S. is violating not just the Leahy Law, but also numerous other domestic and international laws regarding foreign military aid in sending Israel arms. Recently, Amnesty International found that Israel is indeed committing genocide, meaning that ending arms shipments to Israel would be acting in accordance with international law.