With his magnetic personality and deep sense of compassion and humanity, he was very successful at bringing people together and energizing activity.

Unfortunately, he can no longer participate in these activities in Cambridge or anywhere else in the US, because a sustained government attack against him starting in June 2001 ultimately forced him to leave the country in January of 2004. 

As a Palestinian and a Muslim man, he has a perspective that is absent in media and mainstream discourse, but he assumed he had a right to participate in peaceful protests and speak at educational events.  In one workshop on immigrant rights, he described how documents from various law enforcement agencies released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests tell a different a story.

Amer's difficulties with repressive state policies began on June 10, 2001.  Amer and others gathered to protest the Israeli day of celebration to point out that the founding of Israel marks the start of a genocidal campaign against Palestinians, the indigenous people of that land.  Police surveillance video shows the group of thirty or so protesters gathered, holding signs and chanting in the presence of heavy law enforcement.

According to police logs, an order was given to arrest Amer Jubran and clear the demo.  The charge against Jubran?  Assault with a “deadly weapon,” his foot. A Zionist counter-protester claimed Amer had kicked him in the buttocks. Other protesters said no kicking occurred. So did an uninvolved passerby who gave her contact information to the police but was mysteriously never called to testify.

Documents reveal that, after the protest organizers had sought police permits for their demonstration, police contacted the Israeli consulate to warn them. US law enforcement officials reporting the activities of peaceful protesters to a foreign government that has an open policy of political assassination?

The charges against Amer were ultimately thrown out.  Meanwhile, even as the repression and attacks on Arabs and Muslims was growing after 9/11, the Spring of 2002 saw the Arab and Muslim communities mobilizing record numbers of people to protest US policies of aggression and genocide in Iraq and the assault on Jenin Camp in Palestine.

It was in this context that Boston organizers were targeted for state repression. One of them was Jaoudat Abouazza, Palestinian refugee and Canadian passport holder, who witnesses confirm was subjected to forced tooth extraction in the MCI Bristol County prison while in INS detention.  Another was Amer Jubran.

Amer had given a clear call to resist war and racism at two national anti-war convergences, was a green-card holder, and yet even he could not be protected from US government machinations.  On Nov. 2, 2002 in Boston, Amer helped lead a protest to mark the 85th Anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

This was the British Empire's official promise to make Palestine the Jewish homeland, contradicting a previous agreement to give sovereignty of Arab lands to Arabs, and was a leap forward for the European-led Zionist movements goal of creating a state for Jews only in a land populated by Arabs of many faiths: Christians, Muslims, Jews and others.

Two days after the Balfour protest, Amer was arrested by INS and FBI agents. He was brought to a police station for interrogation where he was told that if he would “please the ears” of the FBI agent, he could go home in time for lunch. Otherwise, he was warned, they could let him rot in jail for fifty years.

Amer refused to participate in the witch hunt against Arab and Muslim activists and was jailed without charges for 17 days.  Finally, the government concocted a charge contesting his green card.  The potential for government abuse through fabrication of immigration charges is great. In a criminal charge, the person charged has a right to be assumed innocent. That means the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person committed the crime. In immigration cases, however, the person is assumed guilty until they prove themselves innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. Immigration courts also have no juries, only judges decide.

Over the next year as he and supporters challenged this charge, Amer was subjected to a secret investigation by a dozen homeland security agents, friends and former in-laws faced intimidation and harassment at the hands of these agents including detention – he faced the modern day version of a McCarthy style political witch-hunt under the pretext of the immigration charge.

On top of the government assault, his own lawyer repeatedly failed to seek his consent in key decisions about the proceedings. His lawyer agreed with consulting him to a format that would allow him to give direct testimony one day, return in a week for cross examination and then return in six months to hear from the governments witnesses. The government did not even have a case against him after one year of tracing his every move for the previous 15 years, yet they continued to press on. Amer's lawyer ended up facilitating by agreeing to such an bizarre timetable for the remainder of the trial, even as he acknowledged to the press that Amer was being subjected to a witch-hunt.

At the final hearing on Nov. 6, 2003, Amer told the Judge he would need to dismiss his lawyer and asked the judge to postpone the proceedings so that he could find a lawyer that represented his interests.  The Judge, after having postponed the proceedings twice for the prosecution (enabling the government to continue its unlawful investigation), refused and compelled him to take the stand without a lawyer.

Amer was then in the same position he had found himself with the INS and FBI agents one year before - being asked to testify about other people without the benefit of a lawyer.  He then told the judge “If there is no possibility for justice for me here in the US, I would like to seek voluntary departure to Jordan.”  This was granted and he ultimately flew to his family in Amman on Jan 3.  He saw first hand that the the promise of “freedom” and “democracy' by the US empire is not sincere.

Nevertheless, he leaves behind many close friends and family, and as a Palestinian refugee, he is pushed from one exile to another - with no true homecoming to Palestine in sight.