The Bush administration has decided to pursue a 16-year-old effort to deport two Palestinian activists who as students distributed magazines and raised funds for a group the government now considers a terrorist organization, despite several court rulings that the deportations are unconstitutional because the men were not involved in terrorist activity.





The case, which has long had a high profile among Palestinian Americans, could pose a new judicial test of a controversial provision in the Patriot Act, passed in 2001. The provision prohibits supplying material support for organizations the government deems "terrorist," even without evidence of a link to specific terrorist acts.

At the time of their initial arrests in 1987, the activists, Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh, were allegedly affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist group that has advocated an independent Palestinian state and has been involved in various acts of terrorism.

The government alleges that Hamide and Shehadeh helped raise funds for the PFLP in the mid-1980s at California churches, a Scottish Rite temple and an auditorium owned by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and distributed magazines for the group.

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