[5] The Center for Constitutional Rights brought the suit Arar v. Ashcroft against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, as well as numerous U.S. immigration officials including Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James W. Ziglar.

[6] The suit charged that Arar's Fifth Amendment due process rights were violated when he was confined without access to an attorney or the court system, both domestically before being rendered, and while detained by the Syrian government, whose actions were complicit with the U.S. Additionally, the Attorney General and INS officials who carried out his deportation also likely violated his right to due process by recklessly subjecting him to torture at the hands of a foreign government that they had every reason to believe would carry out abusive interrogation.

In its denial of Arar's petition for certiorari, the Supreme Court upheld the 2nd Circuit's en banc dismissal the case against the named defendants.

The government claimed that the reason Arar was deemed a member of Al Qaeda and sent to Syria, instead of Canada, are "state secrets."

[3] Judge Trager found that national security and foreign policy considerations prevented him from holding the officials liable for carrying out an extraordinary rendition even if such conduct violates our treaty obligations or customary international law.

[8] August 12, 2008 – The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sua sponte issued an order that the case would be reheard en banc.