Welcome Back to America -- 2008

from http://www.alternet.org

At JFK Airport, Denying Basic Rights Is Just Another Day at the Office

By
Emily Feder, AlterNet. Posted August 18, 2008.

I arrived at JFK Airport two weeks ago
after a short vacation to Syria and presented my American passport for
re-entry to the United States. After 28 hours of traveling, I had
settled into a hazy awareness that this was the last, most familiar leg
of a long journey. I exchanged friendly words with the Homeland
Security official who was recording my name in his computer. He
scrolled through my passport, and when his thumb rested on my Syrian
visa, he paused. Jerking toward the door of his glass-enclosed booth,
he slid my passport into a dingy green plastic folder and walked down
the hallway, motioning for me to follow with a flick of his wrist.
Where was he taking me, I asked him. "You'll find out," he said.

We
got to an enclosed holding area in the arrivals section of the airport.
He shoved the folder into my hand and gestured toward four sets of
Homeland Security guards sitting at large desks. Attached to each desk
were metal poles capped with red, white and blue siren lights. I
approached two guards carrying weapons and wearing uniforms similar to
New York City police officers, but they shook their heads, laughed and
said, "Over there," pointing in the direction of four overflowing
holding pens. I approached different desks until I found an official
who nodded and shoved my green folder in a crowded metal file holder.
When I asked him why I was there, he glared at me, took a sip from his
water bottle, bit into a sandwich, and began to dig between his molars
with his forefinger. I found a seat next to a man who looked about my
age -- in his late 20s -- and waited.

Omar (not his real name)
finished his fifth year in biomedical engineering at City College in
June. He had just arrived from Beirut, where he visited his family and
was waiting to go home to the apartment he shared with his brother in
Harlem. Despite his near-perfect English and designer jeans, Omar
looked scared. He rubbed his hands and rocked softly in his seat. He
had been waiting for hours already, and, as he pointed out, a number of
people -- some sick, elderly, pregnant or holding sobbing babies -- had
too. There were approximately 70 people detained in our cordoned-off
section: All were Arab (with the exception of me and the friend I
traveled with), and almost all had arrived from Dubai, Amman or
Damascus. Many were U.S. citizens.

We were in the front row,
sitting a few feet from two guards' desks. They sneered at each
bewildered arrival, told jokes in whispers, swiveled in their office
chairs and greeted passing guards who stopped to talk -- guards who had
a habit of looping their fingers into their holsters. One asked his
friend how many nationalities were represented in the room. "About 20.
Some of everything today."

No one who had been detained knew
precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private
rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from
the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to
another section of the holding area with large computer screens and
cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the
detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their
irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had
disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be
fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be
detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility.

There
was one British tourist in the group. Paul (also not his real name) was
traveling with three friends who had passed through customs soon after
their plane landed and were waiting for him on the other side of the
metal barrier; he suspected he had been detained because of his dark
skin. When he asked if he could go to the bathroom, one of the guards
said, "I wouldn't." "What if someone has to?" I asked. "They will just
have to hold it," the guard responded with a smile. Paul began to cry.
I watched as he, over the course of four hours, went from feeling
exuberant about his trip to New York to despising the entire country.
"I speak the Queen's English," he said to me. "I'm third-generation
British. I came to America because I've always wanted to come here, and
now they've got me so scared that all I want to do is go home. We're
paying for your stupid war anyway."

To be powerless and
mocked at the same time makes one feel ashamed, which leads quickly to
rage. Within a few hours of my arrival, I saw at least 10 people denied
the right to use the bathroom or buy food and water. I watched my
traveling companion duck under a barrier, run to the bathroom and slip
back into the holding section -- which, of course, someone of another
ethnicity in a state of panic would be very reluctant to do. The United
States is good at naming enemies, but apparently we are even better at
making them, especially of individuals. I don't know if it's worse for
national security -- and more embarrassing for Americans -- that this
is the first experience tourists have of our country, or that some U.S.
citizens get treated this way upon entering their own country.

The guard who had been picking his molars for hours quietly
mispronounced the names of people whose turn it was to be questioned,
muttering each surname three times and then moving on. When he called
Omar from City College to his desk, I moved closer to hear the
interview. "Where did you go?" the officer asked. "What is your address
in the United States? Is your brother here illegally? Do you support
Hezbollah? What do you think of Hezbollah in general? How do you pay
for your life here? How many people live with you? Are you sure it's
just you and your brother? Who are your friends?" Omar answered
respectfully and emphatically; he was then asked to wait by the side of
the desk, from which he was ushered toward one of the rooms.

After
four hours, I finally demanded to speak to the guards' supervisor, and
he was called down. I asked if the detainees could file a formal
complaint. He said there were complaint forms (which, in English and
Spanish, direct one to the Department of Homeland Security's Web site,
where one must enter extensive personal information in order to file a
"Trip Summary") but initially refused to hand them out or to give me
his telephone number. "The Department of Homeland Security is
understaffed, underfunded, and I have men here who are doing 14-hour
days." He tried to intimidate me when I wrote down his name -- "So,
you're writing down our names. Well, we have more on you" -- and asked
me questions about my address and my profession in front of the rest of
the people detained. I pointed out a few of the families who had missed
their flights and had been waiting seven hours. His voice barely
controlled, his lip curled into a smirk, he explained slowly,
condescendingly, that they need only go to the ticket counter at Jet
Blue and reschedule so they could fly out in an hour. One mother
responded with what he must have already known: Jet Blue goes to most
destinations only once or twice a day and her whole family would have
to sleep in the airport.

A large crowd began to gather. Everyone
wanted to voice complaints. I explained to the supervisor that his
guards had been making people afraid. He flipped through the green
files, tossing the American passports to the front of the pile. "You
should have gone first, before these people. American citizens first --
that's how it should be." In the face of dozens of requests and
questions, he turned and left.

The guards processed me then,
ignoring the order of arrivals, if there ever had been one. They
refused to distribute more complaint forms or call the supervisor back
down at the request of Arab families. One officer threatened, "I'm
talking politely to you now. If you don't sit down, I won't be talking
politely to you anymore." One announced that because "the American
girl" had gotten angry, the families would have to wait a few more
hours. "The supervisor is not coming back."

I reassured my
Homeland Security interrogator that I did not make any connections with
Hezbollah or with anyone I knew to be associated with such an
organization. I am not a member of any terrorist group. In fact, my
visit to Syria had been so apolitical and touristy that I felt an
embarrassing affinity with the pastel-shirted families waiting by the
Air France baggage carousels in the distance, whom I knew I would
eventually join.

As I walked out of the enclosure, some people
thanked me, squeezing my arm and putting their hands on my shoulders.
It was shocking that briefly standing up to someone overseeing an abuse
of civil rights -- in JFK airport, in the United States, where we
supposedly have laws and a democratic judicial system -- could be
perceived as heroic. I had nothing to lose, but the other people being
detained had everything to lose.

In the past five years I have
worked for human rights and refugee advocacy organizations in Serbia,
Russia and Croatia, including the International Rescue Committee and
USAID. I have traveled to many different places, some supposedly
repressive, and have never seen people treated with the kind of
animosity that Homeland Security showed that night. In Syria, border
control officers were stern but polite. At other borders there have
been bureaucracies to contend with -- excruciating for both Americans
and other foreign nationals. I've met Russian officials with dead,
suspicious looks in their eyes and arms tired from stamping so many
visas, but in America, the Homeland Security officials I encountered
were very much alive -- like vultures waiting to eat.