In April, Abhi posted about two high school girls in New York whom the FBI and Homeland Security jailed on suspicion of being aspiring suicide bombers. The girls were held under Orwellian secrecy, but the case seemed dubious from the start:
“Nobody here believes they are wanna-be suicide bombers,” the [FBI] official added… “We’re not spun up about this case,” said a Homeland Security Department source. [NY Daily News]
After six weeks virtually incommunicado in detention, one girl was released, and the other is being deported to Bangladesh:
… after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family… Many questions remain unanswered in a case that has been marked from the start by secrecy, including closed hearings, sealed FBI declarations, and orders barring attorneys from disclosing government information. [NYT, reprinted in Kansas City Star]
So that’s what happens under the USA FASCIST Act if you’re a 16-year-old Muslim girl who writes a school essay about Islam. Like Guantánamo Bay, you can be jailed without charges for life, and nobody will confirm that you exist. The same behavior by King George III sparked the American Revolution; the same behavior by Cuba, North Korea and Iran lands them on our various axes of evil.
Now what happens if you’re a bug-eyed, swastika-festooned, non-Muslim murderer with a criminal assault record, and you show up at the U.S. border with a bloody chainsaw, slashing weapons and body armor?
You get served coffee and let into the U.S.
Have a nice day!
Gregory Allan Despres was supposed to be going to jail the morning folks spotted him hitchhiking to the U.S. border with a bloody chainsaw. His trousers were spattered with blood. Inside his backpack he had a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife and brass knuckles. He was also packing pepper spray and wearing a bullet-proof vest… Mr. Despres… has a 10-inch swastika tattooed on his lower back… Mr. Young said the U.S. customs agents appeared to be joking around… “When I come back in (to the room) they were giving him a coffee,” he said. “He got processed faster than I did.” [Ottawa Citizen]U.S. customs agents… let him into the United States… The following day, a gruesome scene was discovered in Despres’ hometown of Minto, New Brunswick: The decapitated body of a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick Fulton was found on Fulton’s kitchen floor. His head was in a pillowcase under a kitchen table. His common-law wife was discovered stabbed to death in a bedroom… On the same day Despres crossed the border, he was due in a Canadian court to be sentenced on charges he assaulted and threatened to kill Fulton’s son-in-law, Frederick Mowat, last August. [CNN]
That photo is scaring the bejeezus out of me
Hard for me to imagine why he was let go so easily.
I know Indian-Americans who have been held for longer than that over undeclared packets of basmati rice.
Considering that the U.S.-Mexican border is pretty wide open, and the U.S. does not seem to care, how facist can the U.S. gov’t be?
I was coming back from Tokyo last year around the time of the train bombing in Spain. As my baggage was being combed over, I looked back and saw a row of 6 other Indo-looking brothers getting their shit searched as well. I had no problem with it whatsoever, we look like the “enemy” fine – I got nothing to hide.
But when you read about a story like this, you realize what a bunch of Hillybilly fucks must be working at the border patrol that a guy with a Swastika tattoo covered in blood is ushered through with a cup of coffee, but if it was one of us lawyer/engineer/physician/journalist Desis was coming through – we’d be looked upon as about as favorably as Elton John at a James Dobson sermon.
Infuriating. This is exactly the kind of double standard that totally discredits so-called US border security efforts.
So because the kid’s white he gets into the US scot-free? Last time I checked, non-brown folk had perpetrated loads of terrorist attacks within our own borders. From the Oklahoma City bombings to abortion clinic attacks, not to mention the Klan, people with comparable skin tone to this Despres mofo have committed unspeakable atrocities against their fellow citizens — who were also white!
It amazes and saddens me that something like this could happen, while brown folk have to tolerate ignorant, illegal and unconstitutional arrest and detention in the US and around the world.
What a croc of shit.
Law enforcement’s responsibilities are to enforce the law, plain and simple. If the law is unjust (as in portions of the Patriot Act) they need to be repealed by Congress.
However when a bloody murder is walking around and NO law enforcement agency picks up on him, it freaking stinks.
The CNN story has more details
Citizenship. It has its privileges.
Vinod wrote:
Citizenship. It has its privileges.
Bullshit. When born American Hamza Yusuf came to Toronto for an Islamic conference, he was detained when trying to get back into the US, and told that he could be detained indefinitely.
Yusuf soon stopped answering their questions. It was, he told them, a scene worthy of Kafka. What about his right to attend a spiritual conference, his right to free speech and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure?
“The rules are different now,” one agent said.
That December day, at least 38 other U.S. citizens who attended the “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” conference were held up to six hours at bridges crossing the U.S.-Canada border, according to Homeland Security officials and civil rights activists.
…
After three hours, one woman with children became agitated and suggested she was going to leave. “We’re going to send a car after you to get you,” the officers said, according to officials at the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Here at the border, the Muslims were told, “you have no rights.”
I dunno why y’all are so scared of him – he looks just like Elijah Wood! Then again, after Sin City, mebbe we should be scared …
“according to officials at the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.”
CAIR has zero credibility when it comes to such matters. It’s been sympathetic to suicide bombers, and has inflated the number of “hate crimes” supposedly committed in the U.S.
“CAIR’S Hate Crime Nonsense” http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/viii/230520052
Vinod:
The Border Patrol does have its jurisdictional limits, but agencies often ‘tip’ each other off on certain things. If they did not have the legal right to detain him, the FBI or the local state agencies sure do.
Citizenship. It has its privileges.
Unless your name is Asmaa Elshinawy or something else that sounds ‘furrin’ to border patrol and you just got back from a conference for Islamic youth. Then, even being a native-born US Citizen can’t help you.
According to police, Mr. Despres, believed to be a naturalized American citizen, told the border guards he was in the U.S military.
Well, if we don’t let him in the US, then I guess we don’t support the troops….
“Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up. … We are governed by laws and regulations, and he did not violate any regulations.”
Unless “being bizarre” includes things like wearing hijab or having the name Elshinawy, of course. And please inform me when killing people isn’t a violation of regulations, so I can either take advantage of it or go run and hide.
Is it racism? Is it stupidity? Is it stupidity and racism? Yes? Ok.
This is an outrage that does not surprise me in the least.
So KXB is the house negro here. Interesting. I guess someone has to defend the man.
So KXB posts from Info Israel. InfoIsrael has this as its mission statement “Welcome to http://www.infoisrael.net the official IHC website. Help fight gross falsehoods and distortions of truth, which are the greatest threat to Israel’s existence” I am sure this site has all the goods on CAIR, United Nations and the ACLU. Also KXB posted the anti CAIR article from that brilliant scholar and a murtee of objectivity aka Daniel Pipes. We all can vouch for the credibility of Daniel Pipes. Thanks KXB for exposing CAIR.
KXB, as someone who’s worked with CAIR’s NY chapter, I find it offensive that you claim that CAIR is organizationally “sympathetic to suicide bombers” and provide as justification a link to an article by an Islamaphobe like Daniel Pipes? Here are some excerpts from Daniel Pipe from the CAIR website.
I’m not sure you’re in a position to be talking about credibility.
Al Mujahid/Saurav
This kind of thing does not help any of us:
Islamic leaders, 2 others held in California terror probe
Do you deny that there is a problem here with radical Islam? Or is it all just a figment of peoples imagination? Because that is the way many people seem to want us to think. Just because Daniel Pipes exists does not mean there is no problem. As those sympathetic to CAIR, how do we counteract the religious extremism that seeks to kill and maim as many American citizens as it can? And please dont come with wishy-washy liberal lines about how it is our fault. It is not our fault that radical Islamists want to kill thousands of Americans. It is the fault of those Islamic terrorist sympathisers who allow this poison to infect the Islamic religion and bring it to the shores of America. This works both ways.
Bringing the discussion back to the topic of the post, does anyone know what rights to border police have to detain American citizens or deny American citizens entry to their country? Do Americans have a right to enter America (even if they are immediately arrested after entry?).
Y’all seem awfully quick to assume that I think this whole escapade was a Good Thing. I was just adding the explanation from the border gaurds for why they let him go. It’s a (standard) bureaucratic screwup.
Yes, Despres was served a cup of coffee. But he was also “detained” for 2 hrs. And the next day they discovered the crime, issued a warrant (so a “tip-off” wouldn’t have worked prior to discovering the crime). And the day after that, he was arrested and carted off like the piece of slime he is. 2 hrs detained. 2 days later arrested.
Hamza Yusuf was detained @ the Ottowa airport for 3 hrs (I suppose for some the diff b/t the 2 hr detention and a 3 hr one is very salient… oh well). And then he was released. And since he didn’t commit any crimes he hasn’t been (re-)arrested. Rather different cases.
I cannot see how InfoIsrael (the messenger, if you will) deserves to be shot for pointing out all the mischaracterizations, misstatements, and yes, plain old falsehoods of an organization like CAIR.
As for Pipes, he is often criticized as being anti-Islam. Consider that he is a fluent Arab speaker and reader, unlike most Muslims living in the U.S. who are American born or South Asian immigrants, he can read the bile that comes out of most Arab press outlets. And, unlike his hyperbolic critics, he draws a distinction between the religion of Islam and Islamic militarism. Unlike the terrorist apologists, who constantly hector us that it is our foreign policy which leads these men to violence. IÂ’ll remember that the next time I read about a bunch of Chinese and African guys, angry at our foreign policy, who decide to blow themselves up on buses and airplanes.
Al calls me a house Negro – always the hallmark of the intellectual vacuous. That’s a bit rich coming from a guy who married a non-Muslim woman and lives a comfortable life in the West. Good thing you weren’t born a girl, the Koran would not even allow you that option. But since Mohammed was famous for chasing tail (no matter how young), he wanted to give another incentive to potential male converts.
Chuck Schumer (D), that notorious fascist Senator from New York, said, “…we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism.” Richard Durbin (D), the bigoted senator from Illinois said that CAIR is, “unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect,”
http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/acair.htm
The theme running through a number of these posts seems to be, “Look at that freaky white boy. He must be up to no good.” Of course, that would be profiling, and we know that profiling is the most evil thing in the world.
Um, he was carrying a chainsaw with blood all over it.
As I’ve said elsewhere, funny how every single time there is disparate or unequal treatment by the government, the same house negros come up with 5001 rationalizations and explanations….not saying it was a “Good Thing”, but just “explaining it”…every time. Like this…
Sort of like the boy who cried wolf. After a while it becomes tiresome and is evidence of some sort of self-hatred/Stockholm syndrome.
I support AM’s HN appellation.
First, this thing needs some levity
http://overtaken.blogmosis.com/archives/028572.html
But Seriously, the people making out CAIR to be some kind of a mainstream organization are off their rocker.. How many more of CAIR’s members and leaders do they have to arrest on terror charges before they are labelled a terrorist organization?
here’s a partial perp list:
Ghassan Elashi – founder of the group’s Texas chapter
Randall Royer- CAIR’s communications director and civil-rights coordinator)
Bassem Khafagi- community affairs director of CAIR.)
Rabih Haddad – Ann Arbor CAIR chapter fundraiser
If I am not mistaken, CAIR has never condemned nor disassociated itself with these individuals.
source
If it’s good enough for the White House, it’s good enough for me. Accusations linking CAIR to terrorism have been around since the mid-90s, yet Clinton and Bush continued to invite CAIR to the White House. People within CAIR were strong Bush supporters, although the organization did not take an official stance on the election, various individuals within CAIR helped to mobilize the pro-Bush muslim vote in 2000. After 9/11 CAIR was one of the major groups repeatedly invited by the White House to discuss new regulations.
That said, many of the recent cases you listed are quite disturbing and are causing me to rethink my position on CAIR. It’s a shame b/c much of their American oriented work was quite good.
What’s CAIR go to do with chainsaw wielding nazi whites?
Well, it seems to be very important to commentors here.
Like it or not, CAIR is the most important Muslim civil rights organiation in Canada and the USA. There is no other organization that even comes close. Yeah, CAIR ahd some dubious links. So did George Bush — friends with Sami Al-Arian. (And one of those listed above actually had his own blog — check out Ismail Royer’s Old website).
But on the whole, they do important work. As I wrote a long time ago, if you’re sitting in the back of a Florida squad car shitting your pants because some old lady saw you at a diner and thinks you’re a terrorist, it ain’t the B’nai Brith that’s gonna keep you out of Gitmo. You gotta call CAIR.
Until some other organzation replaces that function, CAIR will be solidly mainstream.
Now, back to chainsaw wielding whites with Nazi tattoos.
What’s CAIR go to do with chainsaw wielding nazi whites?
EXACTLY! Time and again I see the apologists (for both sides) changing the subject when they don’t like the facts of the post. All of a sudden we are caught talking about CAIR and missing the point of the post. Comment # 10 is where we went off track as I see it.
CAIR was first mentioned in Post #8. And if relevance is paramount, what is the relevance of chainsaw wielding nazi whites for South Asians?
Ikram, An American citizen does have the right to enter the United States if he can prove that hes a bona fide citizen. If he fails to prove that on the spot, they still cannot send him back. They can detain him in a facility within the US till he can prove that hes a citizen. As far as detaining people goes, the border guards can detain you just like the police can detain you in the city. Of course they cannot detain you indefinitely and charges need to be filed within a certain number of hours.
Hmmm…For some reason, the comparison of the girls who got unjustly thrown in the slammer to the Neo Nazi psycho’s case doesn’t gel for me.
The way I see it, they are two different issues/categories.
The first one is about wasting resources and unfairly being held in custody without appropriate due process in the name of terrorism/national security.
The second one is about a domestic murderer who is walking around with Customs not proactive in ensuring the bizarre circumstance gets investigated by the appropriate authorities immediately. My question with regards to this one is the same:
Psycho boy does get nailed for the right reasons. The girls get the short end of the stick with one luckily surviving her ordeal and is let go free, the other along with her family getting punished and deported.
Unfortunately, among the illegal immigrant ranks, such an incident will most likely prevent them from coming forward with real intelligence when scumbags do use such communities as cover.
Filtered down the two issues are:
1) Heavy handed terrorism investigation and violation of rights.
2) Authorities not raising a flag when obvious signs exist that a person has commited some violent crime.
A more appropriate (but hypothetical) comparison to the first case would be IF Customs let a Timothy McVeigh back in to the USA, who exhibited evidence of having commited a major terrorist attack (replace an obvious chainsaw with a pickup truck carrying bags of fertilizer and acid), AFTER he conducted his act of terrorism.
KXB, Do you believe that if instead of Mr Gregory, the person with a chain saw soaked in blood was actually KXB, the border guards would set you free in 2 hours ? So Mr Gregory’s race is an issue in this story. May I dare call it ‘white privilege’ ? Vinod’s point about citizen privilege doesnt really explain away the problem either. If Vinod was Gregory he would have been treated much different even though both of them are US citizens.
The reason I called you a House Negro is because you act like one. You are sitting in the house all happy because the fellow brownie working outside happens to be an Arab/Muslim. But like the house negro you forget that for the master all the negros (here brown folks) are the same. Why is it so difficult to accept for you the fact that the border guards would have treated a brown person different ?
Also KXB, I did not take permission from Islam to marry. I dont practice Islam and nor am I am a Muslim. So spare me your diatribe on Muhammad. Save it for someone who cares.
“But like the house negro you forget that for the master all the negros (here brown folks) are the same.”
Sorry, but I do not see myself as a victim.
“Why is it so difficult to accept for you the fact that the border guards would have treated a brown person different ?”
And why is it so hard for you to accept that a sizable number of men trying to do harm happen to be brown. And not just any brown, but a group of brown guys who follow a radicalized notion of their faith?
If the U.S. were really anti-brown and paranoid about security, wouldn’t there be a tad more security on an an otherwise open border with Mexico?
This may come as an uncomfortable truth, but we’ll have to say it again – all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists trying to get into this country to do harm are Muslim.
“It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims,” Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched satellite television station Al Arabiya said in one of the most striking of these commentaries. “
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=8073
The IRA and FARC of Columbia are not found with a trunk full of explosives shortly before New Years Eve 1999.
“Trail of a Terrorist – The story of a young Algerian, trained in bin Laden’s camps, who was caught crossing the Canada-US border in December 1999 with a carload of explosives headed for L.A.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/trail/
Nor was it a bunch of Nazis who attached the WTC back in 1993, plotted to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC back in the mid-nineties, nor destroy two American embassies in Africa.
Even when ships run ashore with illegal immigrants from China (like the Golden Venture), chances are good they are not plotting to raise funds for a foreign terrorist group, unlike say Ghassan Elashi, who was convicted of laundering money for Hamas.
One sentence about Muhammad equals a diatribe? That would make a haiku equivalent to Wagner’s Ring Trilogy, right Al?
Vurdlife – you’re a genius. It’s really sad & a hallmark of our mixed up times that the folks most likely to get worked up about the slightest implied transgression against Indian folk are also the first to throw out epithets like “house negro”.
Don’t forget dirty guju’s either.
I’ve noticed that Al will go to bat for any Muslim/Islam related issue — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but seems to have no problem throwing out his(her?) prejudices towards anything else.
Hello? He was carrying a bloody chainsaw at the time! He was carrying a “sword, a hatchet, a knife and brass knuckles. He was also packing pepper spray and wearing a bullet-proof vest”! He was covered in blood! I’m pretty sure they could have detained him for trying to take weapons across the border instead of taking his weapons and giving him a cup of coffee.
Let’s do an experiment – let’s send V across the border in the same way and see if he gets stopped. That way we can figure out if it was race, or a scrupulous regard for legality that allowed Depres to cross into the US.
i’m not too interested in the initial events that really are the central element of the post-but let me say, i’ve seen KXB commenting for a long time, on my blog, and other places. he’s got his own viewpoint, and he doesn’t (from what i can see) toe any specific party line. he & i probably agree more than we disagree, but disagree we have, but we can at the end of the agree i think that we bring different assumptions and priorities to the table, and that is the primary source of our disagreemant. i don’t know what his personal situation is day-to-day, but in the final estimation i assume his positions are dictated by his self-interest and the values he puts first and foremost.
in sum, i don’t think he’s living anyone’s “big house,” he simply speaks from his own perspective. but perhaps others have a degree of omnisciences that i don’t and know better.
And why is it so hard for you to accept that a sizable number of men trying to do harm happen to be brown. And not just any brown, but a group of brown guys who follow a radicalized notion of their faith?
When they beat you to pulp while shouting fucking paki, you can tell them that you are a different type of brown.
perhaps non-muslim browns should agitate for the deportation of all muslim browns or browns of muslim origin so that they don’t have to be tainted by negative associations? wouldn’t that be in there self-interest?
This thread is truning out to be interesting…
Personally, I am more than willing to accept a certain amount of extra inconvenience at airports and border crossings, as a single, young, brown, male, if it means that it will help reduce the chances of terrorism and save lives.
So you would understand why someone like me would be pissed off when a very suspicious looking guy with a bloddy chainsaw, and machete rentering the United States is subjected to less inconveniences than someone like me.
(note: Like I said before many brown american citizens are regularly detained for longer than two hours over far more trivial issues while re-entering the United States.)
Why couldn’t they have held this guy longer than two hours ? Was race a factor ?
If the border guards did indeed use race as the primary criteria for releasing this guy early (and I am not saying that they did) I contend it dangerous for the safety of all Americans.
Just some nuance to the original post for peopel interested in the legal aspects of it:
As far as I know, the Bangladeshi woman was not deported. Voluntary departure is the same thing for practical purposes, but illustrates how confining someone in jail a few hundred miles from her family lessens their ability to resist, no matter how unfair or ridiculous the grounds for detention. She accepted voluntary departure (and left with her mother, while her father remains here). So her family’s split up, and the governmen’s also trying to split up the other family (Adama’s) by deporting her father.
Also, again as far as I know, she wasn’t held on the PATRIOT act (although I love the mockery :); just like most other people who get detained/removed/accept voluntary departure–just ordinarily old non-criminal administrative violations of immigration law. The two 1996 laws (1, 2)and other preexisting legislation are far more important than the PATRIOT Act for understanding the legal grounds for immigration crackdowns (both pre and post 9/11).
Are you sure? He seems to be quite the disenchanted Muslim to me.
Gee thanks…why I, too, think you’re a…well, uh I like your glasses.
Gujudude, they both have to do with the allocation of law enforcement resources, the efficacy of practices like racial (and other kinds) of profiling, the effects of tactics like that on the mentalities of law enforcement officials (and subsequently their actions), and, most broadly, what happens when you get distracted from stop people from hurting other people because of your own preconceptions/biases.
This border incident shows (among other things) that profiling is bad practice for everyone involved (as some national security and law enforcement officials have been arguing for years), regardless of whether you think prejudiced law enforcement is morally okay. For example, this guy had a warrant out on him in Canada which, apparently, was never checked up on, despite that they spent two hours of hanging out with him. Seems like the sort of thing you might want to share information about if you were in charge of border enforcement 😉
I don’t think, though that, the obvious racism and religious bias in law enforcement practices that this illustrates means you have to ignore Vinod’s important point about citizenship. It’s not an either/or. Noncitizens get treated far worse throughout all aspects of American society than citizens do (particularly when compounded by race, class, etc.).
Razib, It might be in their immediate self interest. However to create a more liberal tolerant society would be in their long term self interest as they are in a minority as well.
However to create a more liberal tolerant society would be in their long term self interest as they are in a minority as well.
yeah, a liberal tolerant society where minority opinions are respected instead of ridiculed is great.
Not all opinions deserve respect 😉
Not all opinions deserve respect 😉
true, the disputes tend to come at the borders of the acceptable are. each online community and the principles who run them determine their own bounds.
I notice a circle jerk phenomenon here.
If you disagree with the majority opinion then u get condescended/ridiculed/sarcasm poured upon etc, that eventually anyone of differing opinion either leaves or keeps those opinions to himself.Over a period of time u will only have people who all more or less agree with each other and have similar outlooks/tastes etc. This will further reinforce these beliefs and make everyone happy because their ideas are lauded and there are no conflicting opinions.
Hope this doesnt happen, bcos i like Manish’s puns and Anna’s cutie pie posts,mutual leg pulling etc. too much.
Welcome to the internets 🙂
Seriously though, I appreciate you pointing this out, because I think that it reflects something that affects anyone who has any outlying opinions. The only thing I can suggest is to articulate yourself well and keep calling it out when you see it. Also, there’s no shame in starting or finding your own space that feels more comfortable–no matter how tolerant and respectful people try to be, there are circumstances where it’s just not going to be worth people’s time to go back and forth over and over over the same points without any hope of convincing the other person of what you’re saying.
Also, you might want to note particular places in broader society this happens too (e.g. possibly electoral politics) 🙂
Seriously if the guy was Middle Eastern or Indian, he would’ve been detained until they got an answer for why he was convered in blood.
How the hell can Americans feel safe when we’ve got delinquents and fools guarding the border?
I am Hindu, it is like a 180 turn from Islam yet my Hindu brothers were “profiled” after the terrorist attack. All because of some religion that I hardly know about. I have muslim friends but imagine marrying one? NO way, and the same with them too…my friend Sara would never marry a Hindu. Thats how its been for centuries. Jeez, when the muslims girl’s came to do henna at my cousins sangeet in India, my grandmother used plastic plates to serve them on. That’s how it is in India. To say I am angry that some religion out there caused irritation to our Hindu and Sikh friends is true. Why should we suffer for some radical people in THEIR religion? Whatever…My cousin got a “stop staring I aint muzzie shirt”…while I think thats a bit too far my sentiments and feelings towards them have gone down in recent years..I got to be honest sorry..Ciao!
Oh yeah, If I was a sikh girl whose dad and brothers got profiled and stared at everywhere they went I would be realllllllllyyy pissed! I feel for the Sikhs I really do, its so unfair. Thanks alot..
Jeez, when the muslims girl’s came to do henna at my cousins sangeet in India, my grandmother used plastic plates to serve them on.
Good thing. These muzzies are known to eat silverware .