Attorney Sheela Murthy has received congratulations from several of our clients as well as participants in the MurthyChat for having recently appeared on the FOX News Live TV program.

FOX News invited Attorney Murthy as an expert in U.S. immigration law to provide a pro-civil rights perspective on a recent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcement initiative. The segment appeared on FOX News Live TV on Saturday, January 12, 2002. Doug Kmiec, Dean, Catholic University School of Law and Legal Counsel to former President Reagan, discussed the opposing view. Rich Folbaum of Fox News anchored the show.

The issues debated arose from the 314,000 persons with outstanding deportation / removal orders who had been entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a database maintained by the FBI. We reported this matter in an earlier MurthyBulletin / MurthyDotCom article entitled INS Sends Names of Deportees to FBI. On January 8, 2002, DOJ identified 6,000 Middle Eastern men from the list and proceeded to give their arrests priority.

In her live television interview, Attorney Murthy made it clear that protecting innocent American lives and rooting out terrorism should be our nation's highest priority. She questioned the use of limited government resources directed at violators of U.S. immigration laws as an attempt to fight terrorism. Attorney Murthy pointed out that the NCIC database would have done nothing to prevent the September 11^th attacks on America because none of the hijackers would have been identified by using only the NCIC database. Sixteen of the nineteen hijackers had no immigration violations. The three who were in violation, had such minor transgressions, that their names would not have been in the FBI database.

She correctly argued that the location of individuals with outstanding deportation orders is an appropriate INS clean-up effort, rather than part of the "war against terrorism," concerned that a false sense of security would be gained through programs of this nature, while true terrorists remain undetected.

The United States Constitution is admired by many the world over as the protector of freedoms and liberties. Attorney Murthy stressed that we must not allow our insecurities and fears to undermine our U.S. Constitution. As aptly put by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

© The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, P.C.