The corrections officers told their new prisoner, Ahmer Iqbal Abbasi, to strip and face the wall. They had already twisted his hands in his handcuffs, shoved him and called him a ‘‘f---ing Muslim,’’ Abbasi said in an interview last week.
It was September 2001, two weeks after 19 Muslim hijackers carried out the worst terrorist attacks in American history. Federal authorities never found any connection between Abbasi, a 28-year-old taxi driver from Pakistan, and the terrorists. But, like hundreds of other Arab and South Asian men swept up after the attacks, he was not a legal immigrant.
Abbasi is one of six plaintiffs in a long-running case brought by noncitizens detained after 9/11 that reaches the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The question for the high court is not whether the men were abused, but whether they have the right to bring a case for damages against high-level US government officials over unconstitutional treatment.
Their lawyers say authorities held some 400 men — many of them Muslim — on the sole basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, national heritage, and immigration status, and subjected them to ‘‘brutal’’ conditions, including verbal and physical abuse, daily strip searches, and months in solitary confinement.
The defendants include former attorney general John Ashcroft, former FBI director Robert Mueller III, and other officials in the administration of George W. Bush.
A divided three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled in 2015 that the lawsuit could go forward.
Civil rights and immigrant advocates say the outcome will set a powerful precedent that becomes all the more significant with the election of Donald Trump because his policy proposals could possibly violate the constitution.
Trump has called for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, a ban on new Muslim immigrants, and deeper scrutiny of Muslims within the United States. He and his advisers have also weighed the idea of a registry for Muslim immigrants, and a visa vetting process that would scrutinize religious beliefs.
‘‘Allowing high-level officials basic impunity for constitutional violations would send a really problematic message at this time when we’re faced with an incoming administration who talks about bringing back torture — and worse, rounding up Muslims — as legitimate policy choices,’’ said Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who will argue the plaintiffs’ case on Wednesday.
Government lawyers, in the final case to be argued by the Obama administration, have urged the high court to reverse the Second Circuit decision and to stop the lawsuit from proceeding. Congress, not the courts, the government lawyers say, should decide whether individuals can sue government officials for what the administration describes in its briefing as ‘‘unintended consequences arising from the implementation of policy decisions they made during an unprecedented national-security crisis.’’
Four former attorneys general from Republican administrations also have weighed in on the side of the former Bush administration officials.
‘‘Nobody claims they even knew who these defendants were, let alone ordered them held in solitary confinement,’’ said Richard Samp, chief counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation, who filed a brief on behalf of the former attorneys general, including Alberto Gonzales and Edwin Meese III.
‘‘The obvious motivation was better safe than sorry. We’re not going to release anyone until we’re sure they are not terrorists.’’
None of the immigrants who filed suit will be present in the courtroom Wednesday. All were deported following their detentions, and the three who sought to return to hear their case argued were denied visas, Meeropol said.
The men who filed suit all lacked lawful immigration status at the time of their detention, but none were found to have any connection to terrorism.
In the weeks following their arrests, authorities also often declined to tell family members where their loved ones were being held, Meeropol said. ‘‘These were disappearances.’’
In 2003, the Justice Department’s inspector general criticized government officials for their handling of some detainees after Sept. 11, finding that the FBI took too long to investigate and clear them of connections to terrorism.
In 2009 the government reached a settlement of $1.2 million with five original plaintiffs in the case. But those men were suing the United States, not the individual officials who presided over policy.
