Outside the Constitution
The worst excesses and crimes of the Bush Administration take place where they think the public won't see or won't care, and where the President and his cronies can claim the Constitution does not apply.
We have seen this sickness at work in the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, where prisoners, many arrested simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, were tortured repeatedly by American soldiers and other government or contractor personnel with the full knowledge and approval of their superiors. Same at the Guantanamo horror show at our Navy base in Cuba.
Some Americans will brush this aside because the victims of those crimes seem so different from themselves.
But bad things also happen to nice white people who get caught up in the Bush Administration's draconian immigration polices. These policies, fed by public hysteria fanned by the President's rightwing commentator brigade, seem too often enforced by low-ranking Customs and Border Protection personnel who channel the worst of American know-nothingism. Even those who aren't find themselves having to enforce repugnant policies passed down from the rightwing cabal in Washington.
Take the case of Domenico Salerno, 35, of Rome, Italy. The New York Times reports today how Salerno, by all accounts a "very open, fun and helpful guy," fell into a Kafkaesque nightmare on April 29 because an immigration agent thought he intended to stay in America illegally to work. In fact, he traveled back and forth to see his American girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper, who grew up across the road from George Washington's Mt. Vernon estate.
In short, here's what happened: a border agent detained Salerno on arrival, refusing to admit him to the U.S. or let him go back to Rome. They claimed he asked for asylum in the U.S., which Salerno denies. As his Cooper put it, "Who on earth would seek asylum from Italy?" Cooper, who went to Dulles Airport to try to straighten things out. A border agent told her, according to the Times story, that her boyfriend "should try spending a little more time in his own country." Salerno was clapped in shackles and taken to a Virginia jail for the next 10 days. Cooper's family got Sen. John Warner on the case, and hired two former immigration prosecutors to defend him. Even then, it appears that only the interest of the Times in the case forced federal officials to release Salerno.
This is one case involving one man, but it speaks volumes about America's standing in the world. Anyone who lands in America, whether in the airport or standing in front of the White House, should have the full protection of American law and the Constitution. No one gave George W. Bush the right to do otherwise.
Today would have been my German grandfather's 107th birthday. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1924 and became a citizen seven years later. I write this for him.