Can't Go Home Again

I heard this outrageous story on NPR, Father, Son Barred from Returning to U.S., about 2 U.S. citizens of Pakistani descent who were not permitted to return to the states after being placed on a "no fly" list. According to Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory, Still more unchecked powers for the Bush administration:

[T]wo U.S. citizens -- a 45-year old resident of the San Francisco area and his 18-year old son -- who, after travelling to Pakistan, have been barred by the Bush administration from re-entering the country. They have not been charged with any crime, and no court has ordered or even authorized this denial of entry. The administration is just unilaterally prohibiting these two Americans from re-entering their country.

Citing a San Francisco Chronicle article, 2 Lodi residents refused entry back into U.S., Greenwald relates:

According to the article, the two Americans have already submitted to an FBI interview, but one of them -- the American-born 18-year-old -- "had run afoul of the FBI when he declined to be interviewed again without a lawyer and refused to take a lie-detector test. " For those actions -- i.e., invoking his constitutional rights to counsel and against self-incrimination -- he is being refused entry back into his country. And the Bush administration is now conditioning his re-entry on his relinquishing the most basic constitutional protections guaranteed to him by the Bill of Rights.

Since neither of the two Americans are citizens of any other country, they are in a bizarre legal limbo where the only country they have the right to enter, the U.S., is refusing to allow them to return home. The Chronicle article quotes Michael Barr, director of the aviation safety and security program at USC, as follows: "You become what is called a stateless person, and that would be very unprecedented."

* * * *

But what possible authority exists for the Bush administration -- unilaterally, with no judicial authorization, and no charges being brought -- to bar U.S. citizens from entering their own country? . . . .

Over the past five years, this administration and its supporters have advocated empowering the Government to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely in military prisons without a trial, eavesdrop on their telephone conversations without any warrants, track and chronicle all of their telephone calls, and now bar their entry into the U.S. -- all without any criminal charges being filed and without any opportunity to contest the accusations, all of which are formed in secret.

See also, this NY Times article, U.S. Blocks Men's Return to California From Pakistan.

Daily Kos US Citizens denied re-entry to US, by fiat. No hearing. No charges. Just not let back in, notes:

It always starts with one "brown" guy.

One Bolshevik, one kulak, one "Enemy of the People", one Jew, one Japanese-American, one Communist, one educated person, one literate person, one Arab.

(Roughly in chronological order; I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to connect each "Enemy" to the society that demonized them. Feel free to add other examples.)

That one guy, or two in this case, is supposed to be our warning that it's time once again to fertilize the tree of liberty.

Because if we don't, suddenly it's not "just one" anymore; it's a thousand, a hundred thousand, six million, 20 million. And then everybody exclaims in surprise, "how could this happen in a civilized nation?!"

Reminds me of the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

Tags: News, Civil Liberties, Racism, Profiling