August 19th, 2006
There are some Americans who would have you believe that everyone picked up on suspicion of terrorism should forfeit their rights as a human being. Some Americans will tell you that the fact that we are “at war” means that we have the right “to do what we have to do” in order to protect ourselves without apology and without conscience. There are Americans who don’t understand that when we deny other human beings the simple rights that we expect from each other, we stop being human beings ourselves.
The veiled accusations and vehement denials would continue for nearly five years - despite official findings in 2001 that he had no terrorist links and in 2003 that authorities had violated his rights by colluding to keep him in custody.
Of the estimated 1,200 mostly Arab and Muslim men detained nationwide as potential suspects or witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigation, Benatta would earn a dubious distinction: Human rights groups say the former Algerian air force lieutenant was locked up the longest.
His Kafkaesque journey through the American justice system concluded July 20 when a deal was finalized for his return to Canada. In the words of his lawyer, the idea was to “turn back the clock” to when he first crossed the border.
But time did not stand still for Benatta: The clock ran for 1,780 days. The man detained at 27 was now 32.
“I say to myself from time to time, maybe what happened … it was some kind of dream,” he said. “I never believed things like that could happen in the United States.”
Benemar “Ben” Benatta, a former Algerian air force lieutenant, arrived in Canada on September 5, 2001 seeking political assylum. A week later, he was escorted back across to the U.S. and turned over to U.S. immigration. Benemar Benatta didn’t learn about the the 9-11 terrorist attacks until September 12th when FBI agents paid him a visit. He was sent to a federal prison in Brooklyn and when he insisted he wasn’t involved in the attacks, they threatened to send him back to Algeria — a certain torture and death sentence for his desertion. The interrogations continued.
Prison guards, he said, dispensed humiliation in steady doses - rapping on his cell door every half hour to interrupt his sleep, stepping on his leg shackles hard enough to scar his ankles, locking him in an outdoor exercise cage despite freezing temperatures, conducting arbitrary strip searches.
Benemar Benatta was never charged of any crime during this time and in November 2001, the FBI prepared a report clearing him of any involvement in the 9/11 attacks. However, no one bothered to tell Benatta and in fact they didn’t bother to set him free or allow him access to the outside world.
Finally, in April, he was transfered to Buffalo to face federal charges of carrying a phony ID when he was first detained. Benatta was denied bail while he fought the case. However, at least he was allowed into the general population of federal defendants housed at an immigration detention center. It was also the first time he was allowed access to the news and the first time he was allowed access to scenes of what had happened at the World Trade Center and he was shocked.
It wasn’t until the second anniversary of the attacks that U.S. Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr., in a bluntly worded ruling, found that Benatta’s detainment for a deportation hearing was “a charade.”
Though terrible, the Sept. 11 attacks “do not constitute an acceptable basis for abandoning our constitutional principles and rule of law by adopting an ‘end justifies the means’ philosophy,” Schroeder wrote. Based on that decision, another judge tossed out the case on Oct. 3, 2003.
“That gave me so much hope,” Benatta said. “For me, it’s like (the judge) had so much nerves. He gave me some kind of hope in the judicial system all over again.”
However, Benatta demanded asylum but the U.S. Immigration authorities wanted him deported for overstaying his visa. (Brilliant, isn’t it? We lock him up for no reason and then want to deport him because we locked im up? Punish the victim! The United States Way!)
An immigration court first set bail at $25,000, then ruled he should stay behind bars indefinitely - a situation a United Nations human rights group decried as a “de facto prison sentence.” Most asylum seekers are released pending the outcome of their cases.
It took another two years before a Manhattan attorney, Catherine M. Amirfar, found a solution: She convinced Canadian authorities to let her client apply for asylum there without jailing him.
“Canada was willing to take him back and turn back the clock five years,” she said. “Of course, Benemar will never get those five years back.”
The last detainee was deported in his prison smock without an apology. He remembers cold stares when he ate his first meal at Wendy’s and went to a mall to buy clothes.
Today, there’s no more soul-numbing confinement. But he’s still caught in waiting game, this time to see whether Canada will grant him asylum - a decision at least six months away. He also wonders if he can regain enough spirit to start a new life.
“Now I’m not the same person,” he said. “When I came to the United States, I was optimistic. I had so much energy. That’s not the case now.”
Source: 9/11 Detainee Released After Nearly Five Years
Imagine five years of your life gone because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Imagine that you had been seeking help from countries that were supposed to be the good guys and instead you ended up tortured and imprisoned for 5 years.
And Benatta isn’t the only one. The U.S. has a history of playing games with detainees since 9/11. How many of the Guantanamo Bay detainees were cleared and weren’t told?
Tags: 9/11, Benemar Benatta, Algeria, detainees, FBI, political assylum, U.S. Immigration
March 29th, 2006
Yesterday afternoon, I heard an interview with a “spokesperson” for illegal immigrants. Of course this is the hot topic of the week what with all the legislating in Washington D.C. the last week or so and the protests.
(I’ll go ahead on record stating that I’m against an amnesty program because I have a whole problem with the whole illegal bit of the undocumented immigrant issue. I don’t want to see people rewarded for committing a crime when other people have been waiting patiently going through the proper channels trying to get into the country legally.)
Anyway, so this guy, this spokesperson for illegal immigrants said that they were thinking of organizing a march on Washington because look how well it worked for “the blacks”.
First of all, I find it so very offensive that he used the term “the blacks” particularly since he was a well-spoken radio announcer who is supposed to be a role model, spokesperson, and representative for his community and the “illegal immigrants” who want to become citizens.
Second, the difference between the civil rights movement and this is that “the blacks” didn’t ask to be brought to this country originally and certainly they deserved to be treated as equals. Illegal immigrants have broken the law, sneaking into our country, invading it even, using our resources. They aren’t citizens. This isn’t about civil rights and treating each other as equals. This is about people and the companies who hire them knowingly breaking the law and demanding that we just forget about it and reward them for it.
I guess I don’t have a very liberal point of view on this one. I just think it’s simple and I don’t understand why everyone sees it as more complicated than that. There’s a law. These people broke it. They should be punished.
Tags: immigration
February 27th, 2006
Holy crap.
Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers
By Rachel L. Swarns
New York Times
February 4, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.
KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year. [“Halliburton detention camp contract: cause for alarm?”]
This just sends a chill down my spine. When I read it, all I could think was “Where have I read this before?
Oh, yes.
In 1984, FEMA tested it’s wartime crisis strategy in conjuction with Pentagon maneuvers. Their “readiness exercise” was code named Rex-84. FEMA’s part of the simulation had to do with an international crisis set off by a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua which resulted in a swarm of refugees coming in over the Mexican border into the U.s. According to an article in Penthouse (August 1985), during the exercise FEMA would simulate rounding up some 400,000 fictional “aliens” in a six-hour period and detaining them in military camps thoughout the U.S. FEMA justified the detention camps by suggesting that terrorist moles could be among the refugees. However, according to one of the co-authors of that Penthouse article, the terrain of the Mexican border made such a huge influx of hundreds of thousands of people highly unlikely.
If that’s the case, who exactly was FEMA interested in rounding up?
Some critics believe that Rex-84 was actually a simulation to practice rounding up Americans in large numbers — probably those “flaming hippies, militant minorities, and draft-dodging radicals of the 60’s and early 70’s, not to mention possible protestors of a controversial government invasion of Central America. Not a far leap in logic when you consider the fact that in 1970, Giuffrida had written a paper devising a hypothetical plan to detain black radicals in detention camps. [“FEMA’s Dark History”]
The “plan” last time was to set FEMA up to declare martial law during any kind of crisis and have it take over the government — comforting considering how well it’s been doing with hurricane disaster and recovery.
Forget Gitmo, Bush & company are blatantly planning and building concentration camps for dissidents now — and remember, dissidents are anyone who doesn’t agree 100% with every single thing that Bush’s administration claims is the right thing, even if it totally disagrees with what they said last week.
1984, anyone?
Folks, this administration is very semi-quietly putting everything in place so that one day we are going to wake up and discover that we are living in a police state and our civil liberties are gone! And if you think that living like that is worth the empty promises of a President and his political party that terrorists won’t attack again on our soil, you might as well be a slave now. What kind of life is that? Let me tell you something. The terrorists are winning. They’re winning because what they wanted was to affect us, to change us, to enslave us, to force us to give up our freedoms. They might not be sitting on a throne dishing out the rules from our own capital, but they might as well be if we are willing to sacrifice the very freedoms that we prided ourselves on, taunted the Iron Curtain with, and claim we want to bring to the rest of the world.
Say goodbye to the Land of the Free. There’ll be a law against freedom soon.
Tags: politics, Halliburton, Conspiracy Theories, Homeland Security, immigration, FEMA
September 22nd, 2005
Yesterday, Big Dog wrote an excellent post about how illegal immigrants displaced by Katrina are afraid to seek help for fear of deportation. Some organizations believe that they should be given “protected human status” because they’ve already lost so much thanks to Katrina.
Illegal immigrants are…well…illegal. They’re committing a crime and I agree that they shouldn’t be awarded for committing the crime. All that does is make committing the crime more appealing to people who haven’t yet, but were thinking about it — which I know may sound heartless. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be given immediate relief and aid; I’m saying they committed the crime and they should be deported.
But I don’t really want to get distracted by my feelings on illegal immigration. I want to talk about how Katrina essentially took the city of New Orleans and it’s surrounding areas and shook it up and mixed all the bad apples in with the good.
More and more stories are coming out about how background checks on refugees requesting/accepting Federal aid have criminal backgrounds. Many have warrants. Some are sex offenders.
Now think about that for a second.
Around the nation, state and local authorities are checking refugees’ pasts as they are welcomed into homes, schools, houses of worship and housing projects. In some states, half the refugees have rap sheets. [“Authorities search for criminals among hurricane refugees (CNN.com)”]
How scary is that?
And guess what! Some of them are just going to walk free because Louisiana can’t or won’t extradite them!
So, what I ask is this: do these people, these so-called criminals, deserve a “protected human status” as well? What about the man with rape charges? What about the ones who are registered sex-offenders? Haven’t they suffered the same tragedy?
Just think of all the ones who could just “disappear” in the confusion. Just think of all the ones who’ll be let go because Louisiana can’t do anything about them right now.
Just think that he or she might be sitting next to you on the bus, might be sleeping next to you in the shelter, might be eating at your generous dinner table…
Tags: immigration, Hurricane Katrina
August 13th, 2005
My dad makes me giggle even as he confounds me as to what political party he subscribes to the most. Growing up, I thought my parents were Republicans. Certainly, I thought they were conservatives. My father was a government employee and he took that seriously. He said he had been instructed not to discuss his political positions or advocate any particular candidate and he stuck to it. It’s only been in the last few years that my father and I have had in-depth political discussions.
My father has been a series of surprises to me over the years. He doesn’t think suicide should be illegal and advocates assisted suicide. He thinks drugs should be made legal but would probably ground me (a 30-something) for life if he thought I’d so much as been near a nonprescribed narcotic. He thinks prostitution should be legalized and regulated. He didn’t vote for Clinton or Bush. He’s for the woman’s right to choose and in separation of church and state. He believes in God and in doing the right thing and is a Christian but I don’t know the last time he went to church. He is against the War in Iraq and never thought there were weapons of mass destruction. In fact, he thinks we invaded Iraq because we needed to keep a war going. My dad was an Army Captain who served state-side during the Vietnam War and he married an Air Force brat, who’s father flew in that same war as well as many others. My father believes only married people should be intimate and he once made my uncle stay in a hotel with his girlfriend because they couldn’t sleep in the same bed in his house. Yet he bought me alcohol years before I was legal (probably because he thought if they made it not such a big deal then I wouldn’t waste so much time trying to sneak out and get drunk like my friends). My father seems to generally believe that as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, what’s the big deal?
Tonight on the phone, I mentioned to my dad that I’d seen on the CNN.com that the governor of New Mexico had declared a state emergency due to issues with a rise in crime due to illegal immigrants coming across the border. (Since we now live in states I didn’t grow up in, we try to keep up with each others’ news. Gives us something to talk about.) What followed was a discussion I won’t much get into here because well, for the most part I agree with him and I have a migraine, but the gist is that my dad feels that the immigrants are crossing the border are coming here looking for work for the most part and the way to put a stop to it is to start fining those employers who employ illegal immigrants. Of course, to do that we have to do things like investigate the payrolls and employee lists. We have to stop city and state governments that want to give illegal aliens driver’s licenses and the right to vote — giving them a license won’t make them a better driver. If they can register for either, then they can be caught and shipped back home.
What made me giggle was that my dad said we could do all of this but for those “bleeding heart liberals” who are worried about the immigrants’ rights and treatment and also the government wouldn’t want to upset the businessmen. I had to giggle because while I know neither he nor I think either of us is a “bleeding heart liberal”, I know there are many out there that think we are. O.K. I admit I’m probably closer to being a tree-hugging, peace-loving hippie-type liberal than he is, but I know we’re both liberals and it was funny to hear him say it.
The truth is that I don’t think the majority of the country is full of “bleeding heart liberals” or “religious right-wing nuts”. I think most of us are in the middle somewhere. We all have our opinions based on our life experiences and some of us are just a bit more stubborn about them than others. Certainly a lot of us are passionate about certain issues. Some of us sell our souls to tow the party line and see the issues as black and white while others see things as more flexible, more gray with maybe a little blue and pink in there somewhere.
Tags: liberals, Republicans, politics, immigration
July 11th, 2005
Really, this is just more proof that the government doesn’t have a clue. We certainly aren’t safer. Immigration hasn’t gotten stricter. Most imported cargos are still not thoroughly checked. People are still getting on airplanes with all manner of ridiculous items and there hasn’t seemed much interest in making certain other modes of transportation are safe.
Senate likely to restore cuts to rail security funds:
Three weeks before London’s bus and subway bombings Thursday, a Senate committee voted to slash spending on mass transit security in the United States, a decision sure to be reversed when Congress returns next week.
And yet, most of the Homeland Security Funding has been misspent on things like air-conditioned garbage trucks, sending sanitation workers to a Dale Carnegie course that has nothing to do with emergency preparedness ($100K, btw), a computerized car towing service, and other things that don’t seem to concern Homeland Security.
What a mess.
Tags: Senate, immigration, Homeland Security
