"The court has recognized that what happened to me was wrong," said Mosed Omar, the plaintiff in the lawsuit. "When the government took my passport after over forty years living in the United States, I thought my life was over. I did not know if I would ever see my family again. I was stuck in a dangerous war zone."
Mr. Omar, 64, went to the Embassy in January 2013 to help his youngest daughter apply for a U.S. passport. Instead, embassy officials escorted Mr. Omar to an interrogation room where they held him for a full day without his medication. He eventually became so ill that he felt compelled to sign a statement because he was told that signing the statement was the only way to retrieve his passport and leave the Embassy. This statement said that "Mosed Omar" was a false name he used to immigrate to the U.S. Tellingly, he signed the statement with the same purportedly false name.
When the Embassy refused to return Mr. Omar's passport, he was left to fend for himself in Yemen-separated from his wife, children, and grandchildren in San Francisco-for over a year before he was allowed to return home in February 2014. Without medical treatment in Yemen, he suffered a heart attack shortly after he returned to the U.S.
In a groundbreaking opinion, federal magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley held that the government acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it revoked Mr. Omar's passport. In the first paragraph of her decision, Judge Corley addresses the key question in the case, "whether the United States government may revoke a United States citizen's passport based solely on a purported 'confession' that the citizen did not write, dictate, read, or have read to him, but did in fact sign. On the record before the Court, the answer is no."
Mr. Omar is represented by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus and Covington & Burling LLP.
"This case challenged a troubling practice by the State Department of confiscating passports from U.S. citizens on the basis of coerced statements," said Nasrina Bargzie, Senior Staff Attorney at the Asian Law Caucus. "The Court's order makes clear that there are limits to what the State Department can put U.S. citizens through and that the State Department needs to abide by basic standards of fairness."
"The sole basis for the Department's revocation was a confession that Mr. Omar testified, under penalty of perjury, that he did not understand and signed against his will," said Joanne Sum-Ping, an attorney at Covington & Burling LLP, which represented Mr. Omar on a pro bono basis. "Because the State Department made no effort to rebut Mr. Omar's allegations, the court held the Department's decision was arbitrary and capricious."
"The court's ruling calls into question the State Department's revocation of dozens of other Yemeni-American's passports based on similar coerced confessions," said Bargzie. "We hope that the State Department will stop using this practice and will allow Mr. Omar and other similarly affected Americans to return to their lives."
"What happened to Mr. Omar was unjustifiable, but it happened to dozens of other people in Yemen too. And the reality is it could happen to any U.S. citizen who traces their citizenship to naturalization. We have asked the State Department to stop this discredited practice and are demanding that the Office of Inspector General conduct a thorough investigation," said Bargzie.
The court has remanded the case to the State Department for a new passport revocation hearing in 60 days. Remand is a standard procedural move after a court finds a federal agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously. On remand, the Department will bear the burden of establishing that Mr. Omar's passport was properly revoked, and it is prohibited from taking Mr. Omar's passport on the basis of the coerced statement alone.
In October 2015, Judge Corley had ordered the State Department to return Mr. Omar's passport pending resolution of his case. Today's order allows Mr. Omar to keep his passport throughout the administrative proceedings on remand.
