This is a letter I am planning to write to my congressman, senators, and the Department of Homeland Security/INS/whoever else I can find:
To whom it may concern,
A few months ago there was a news report about the INS holding people for hours with little reason other than superficial suspicions. According to this report, INS officers were extremely rude and did not tell the detainees why they were being held.
I never thought that this would happen to my family. My niece is a Swiss citizen and has been visiting our home between August and December 2008. On October 6, 2008 my 19 year old niece was returning from a 5 day trip to Mexico to visit her friend. Her port of entry was Houston, Texas. As she passed through customs she was tagged and escorted to a separate room. She was taken to a room where there were several other people waiting to be interviewed. She was not told why she was taken out of the line. She was not told how long the wait would be. She had 30 minutes until her connecting flight to Newark was scheduled to leave. The DHS agent who initially looked at her passport flagged her after asking how long she would be in the United States. (include all the details here). Another agent came to the desk and, without any explanation, took her to a separate office where she was ordered to wait with several other detainees. My niece waited about 10 minutes and was called over to another desk where she was interrogated, questioned about all the details of her trip and how long she would be in the United States. The officer then, with no additional explanation, asked her to wait. My niece was getting more and more nervous because she was now going to miss her flight. She was again summoned to the desk, this time her belongings were searched. The officer became ruder and more intimidating while he asked her about a name she had written down in her purse, a letter she wanted to post from the United States, and other items in her bags. After this second round of interrogation, my niece was asked to sit down again while the officer consulted with another officer in the room. My niece was again summoned to the desk and then allowed to leave. In her own words, this is how the experience effected her:
"It’s not only that I got detained on my way from Mexico back to the United States. What also made me very angry was how they treat you. English is not my mother language as the people who are working there should’ve seen this by my Swiss passport. Nevertheless, the woman at the border control was very unfriendly when I had to ask her for some words twice or three times. Without any comprehension of my situation. And also the man who was working on my case. Of course he told me what he wanted to know when I didn’t understand the question, but in a way that I had the feeling I am really stupid. There were other people waiting in the office, among them a woman with a kid. A worker asked suddenly who the child belongs to and looked at the first row, directing to a man. He thought that he has to go to the desk and stood up and then she asked again and he was confused. Perhaps he didn’t spoke English as his mother language. Then the mother said that it’s her child and the woman at the desk said without any respect and in a way you speak to dog that the man has to sit back down and that she wasn’t talking to him and why is he standing there. I felt really dirty in there and as if I did something wrong or I am a criminal. When I came out of the office and called my aunt, I just cried because it was so overwhelming and too much for me. I was shocked and also sad because I thought that I have to go back to Switzerland now."
I was shocked and disturbed by these events and I could not believe that my niece would be treated in this manner by our country. A nineteen year old young woman traveling alone on a Swiss passport could not possibly be a threat. I can understand customs being concerned about drugs or illicit material, but this could have been dealt with by a customs agent and not through a rude and deliberately harassing DHS agent. If this could happen to my young niece, it could happen to any of us. She was violated, harassed, and her rights were taken in a way that was totally unnecessary.
As an American citizen I am outraged by these events. I expect you to take some action to correct this horrible travesty. I do not mean that the particular INS officer should be sanctioned. I believe this is a systemic problem and overcompensation for the events of 911 and the Patriot Act. Please do not respond to this letter with one of your form letters, I will be offended. I would like a direct and personal response to this letter directly from you. Or, I would be happy to meet with you in your Newark, Elizabeth, or Jersey City office so that I can be clear that you are going to take meaningful action.
Thank you for your attention to this matter and I look forward to hearing from you.
1 comment:
It’s not DHS and it’s not personal. At least not for me. I’ve been in this country since 1970, and have been an American Citizen since 1981. That makes me an immigrant, and someone who has had extensive experience with INS long before terrorism was the thing to invoke to scare uneducated voters.
I witnessed 15 years of frustration by my parents’ effort to become citizens and fight the lamest bureaucracy imaginable. So the story starts when we came to the States pie eyed and full of hope for the American dream. Well, my parents were and I was along for the ride more than less.
They immediately applied for citizenship (which then took 5 years). If their citizenship were granted before I turned 18, I would automatically become a citizen. Their applications were repeatedly lost, delayed, and otherwise ‘civil servant quality controlled’, so by the time I was 18, they were nowhere and I applied individually as an adult.
I fared better, and was called for my naturalization hearing three years later. I reported as directed, and was ushered into a room with an obese man behind a desk. Bear in mind that by now, I had done several years of anticipatory studying of the American life, government, history, etc and spoke English without any noticeable accent.
He directed me to write on the back of my passport photo “I go to school.” I asked him to repeat that, as I was pretty incredulous that this was my citizenship test. He got irritated and asked me if I understood English. I nodded, wrote on the back of my photo the requisite sentence, and this is where it turned from bad to worse. He took what I had written, picked up a 3X5 index card to compare sentences, stood up and said, “Mr. Silberman, congratulations. You are now a US citizen.”
I can’t remember when I felt more gipped. We then sang the national anthem and I received my passport in the mail a few months later. Then the fun began. It turns out that instead of typing 1960 as my birthday, whoever filled out my papers typed 1969 (this was all done with typewriters without numeric keypads at that time, and was an innocent fat finger).
Not sure whether I should end this tale by telling you when my parents finally became citizens (many years after me), or when I finally got this straightened out (last year). In fact, my birthday went from 1969, to 1960, but then the date was transposed, and after three iterations, the department of homeland security conceded that my date of birth would be off by 10 days forever, they saw precisely the trail of mistakes, but were too busy chasing terrorists to fix it and I shouldn’t worry about it. I would get my social security ten days earlier (assuming there is any), and they didn’t care so I shouldn’t either.
This is not about hubris, or evil, but good old american lameness. It’s about powerless people needing to make themselves feel better by abusing those less powerless than them. I detest our current administration, and as someone who actively spent over a decade trying to naturalize myself I often feel I wanted it more than those that were given it by birth and took it for granted. I have never felt as disgusted being an American as I have under George Bush, but I can’t blame this on him. This is about lack of education, lack of ego integrity, and intellectual abdication.
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