National Legal and Policy Center
CNSNews.com Information Services
Thursday, Nov. 8, 2001

VIA FACSIMILE 212-679-1940
November 8, 2001

Mr. Joshua Gotbaum
Executive Director
The September 11th Fund
United Way of New York City
2 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Dear Mr. Gotbaum:

Americans generously donated to the September 11th Fund to help the victims of the terrorist attacks.

They did not contribute to help the terrorists, their supporters, or people arrested or detained because they violated immigration laws.

On October 3, the September 11th Fund announced a $171,000 grant to the Legal Aid Society (LAS). Your group's own press release stated the purpose of the LAS grant was to "provide emergency civil legal assistance to low-income attack victims."

On November 1, the Wall Street Journal reported in an article ("Detainees on INS Breaches Held in Solitary Status") that the Legal Aid Society was providing civil legal assistance to eight detainees in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

The article quoted Janet Sabel, identified as the head of the immigration division of New York's Legal Aid Society, as saying that the detainees "are being held in isolation, treated as security risks and interviewed by the FBI with almost no opportunity to first get counsel."

The article further identified the eight detainees as clients of Ms. Sabel and stated that "Unlike people charged criminally, Immigration and Naturalization Services detainees aren't entitled to government-appointed lawyers."

At a time when the public is questioning why so few of the victims have received aid they desperately need from groups that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, it is disturbing that LAS so quickly rushed to provide free civil legal help to the detainees.

On November 6, Congress held a hearing regarding whether funds donated by the public for September 11th victims could be ethically reprogrammed for other charitable purposes such as blood bank support.

We believe the public will be outraged - and justifiably so - to learn that funds from the September 11th Fund are going to support a group which is apparently providing civil legal help to those jailed on violations of immigration law in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

If the September 11th Fund is to have any integrity whatsoever to the public and those who have so generously donated to it, it should:

* immediately seek to recover the $171,000 granted to the Legal Aid Society
* publicly seek a full accounting by an independent accounting firm of the resources used by the Legal Aid Society to provide legal assistance to detainees
* require that all funds dispensed in the future go to groups which do not have their own political, ideological, or legal agenda inconsistent with the intent of the donors or inconsistent with the interests of actual or potential terror victims.

Since 1993, the National Legal and Policy Center has monitored abuses by legal services programs through our Legal Services Accountability Project. After exposing and documenting hundreds of instances of waste, fraud, and abuse over the years, this would seem to be the most troubling betrayal of the public trust that we have ever come across.

We ask that you address this situation, as we have specified, without delay.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Boehm, Chairman
Peter Flaherty, President

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