President Bush Signs the "USA Patriot Act"

On Friday, October 26, President Bush signed into law the USA PATRIOT ACT. Significantly, this legislation contains provisions that provide relief to foreign nationals whose family members were victims of the September 11 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. The final version also contains provisions that expand the definition of terrorism for the purposes of holding individuals to be inadmissible to the United States and for removing individuals from the United States. The USA Patriot Act provides for the mandatory detention of aliens whom the Attorney General suspects have engaged in terrorist activity, and limits judicial review in these types of cases. While the USA Patriot Act contains these broader powers, it is less restrictive than the Bush Administration’s initial legislative proposal to Congress, which would have granted uncontested power to the Attorney General to detain individuals suspected of terrorist activities indefinitely without an opportunity for an immigration judge to review the Department of Justice’s actions.