Image from Donald Trump/Truth Social
By James Moore
There had been much joy in my flight across the Pacific. My trip to Australia had been the realization of childhood dream. Even in college, I had fantasized about moving down under to it’s broad skies and endlessly open landscape. I thought it represented an uncomplicated way of living, independence and self-reliance. Not much I encountered on my 30-day motorcycle and camping trip across the country contradicted my fanciful imaginings. Every person I encountered was kind and generous, frequently offering food and overnight accommodations. (Where do they keep the bastards, I wondered.)
The weather was benign and the winds mostly out of the west, nudging me eastward on the big motorcycle. Scenery was stunning in its variations, and pastel in the seemingly permanent sunlight, as though from a child’s picture book. I rode without fear across the Outback’s Nullarbor Plain, up the Stirling and Grampian Mountain ranges, along both coasts of the Ayre Peninsula, down the Great Ocean Road, through the Clare Valley and Limestone Coast wine regions, and along the Snowy River. I accumulated regret as every mile drew me closer to my journey’s end and a return flight to the states.
After landing in Los Angeles, I finally made it to a customs inspector, who opened my passport, punched something into his computer keyboard, and looked up at me with confusion on his face.
“Can’t imagine what you might have done, sir,” he said.
“I’m sorry? What are you talking about.”
“Well, the system has an alert out on you. You don’t seem the type.”
“I’m not the type. What’s the alert about?”
“Doesn’t tell us. I’m just going to have you escorted over to a room where detained travelers wait for clearance.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“Well, the government is.”
I sat for almost two hours waiting for another inspector, who finally walked in, and did not address me until he had spent ten minutes tapping his keyboard. I was the only person in the room but apparently did not exist until spoken to, and then I became a dubious character. He asked me questions about my trip, where I had gone in Australia, what was the purpose of my travel, if I had met with government or political organizations, and my family background. I refused to answer any of them and told him my personal life was not my government’s business. I have never been arrested or even had a moving violation driving ticket, no government or criminal record existed bearing my personal data. The inspector asked me for the same information in a second round of questioning, and I repeated my response. After rolling his chair back from the computer display, he sat without speaking or looking at me for what I guessed was fifteen minutes, and then waved me out the door.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I thought I was free as an American citizen until I came in here.”
He had already stood up and was walking in the opposite direction toward a different door than the one through which I was leaving.
I was pretty certain I knew why I had been stopped, though. A few years previously, I had published a couple of books critical of the George W. Bush administration, including his lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I had also extensively investigated his family’s use of political privilege to help him avoid combat in the Vietnam War. A few months after my book was published about Bush going AWOL from the Texas National Guard, I discovered I had been placed on the “No Fly Watch List.” This was not coincidental; it was harassment. Individuals listed on the NFWL could still fly, but there were complications. No baggage curb check was allowed or use of kiosks to check in for your flight. Online check in was completely blocked. I was forced to go to the counter and talk to a ticket agent and was subjected to a public hand check after going through electronic scanning.
The first time I went to the ticket counter at the Austin airport, I ended up in a kind of shock. None of it made sense and the agent looked at me with her own bafflement about my problem.
“I’m sorry, sir, but there is an alert on here for us to call Homeland Security in Washington before clearing you for departure.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said.
“Well, let me call and see if I can clear things up.” She did, but nothing got simpler, and she handed me the phone with a pleasant smile. I did not wait for cordial exchanges from whomever was on the other end of the line.
“I need to know what’s going on. Why have I been placed on this list. It’s absurd.”
“There really isn’t much I am allowed to tell you, sir. I’m afraid.” Another female voice.
“There has to be some kind of rationale, doesn’t there?”
“I think the most I can offer is that there is something in your background that might relate to someone the government is searching for.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “I have the most mundane name in all of the English language, no arrest record, no back taxes, nothing. How can I even be remotely similar to a terrorist’s profile?”
“I’m sorry, sir. There’s nothing else I can tell you.”
I survived the public display of a hand check search and caught my flight to Washington to conduct research and interviews for a new book. Attempts to concentrate on reading during the flight were hopeless and my mind wandered to my late father. As a young man in his mid-twenties, he was pulled from the Mississippi River bottomlands to fight in World War II. He walked across Europe as a sharpshooter, killing bad guys who were threatening freedom and democracies. I found it utterly unbelievable that one generation removed from his service that his son was being harassed as a potential terrorist by the country and government he had served. My freedom of speech was being threatened. By the time my plane landed, I was livid with building resentment, and I called an attorney I thought could help.
“I understand your frustration, and especially your anger,” he said. “But we’ve taken on a few cases like yours and I can tell you that the outcomes are not pleasing to our clients.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We file the suits, and they have legitimate claims,” he said. “In some ways, this is almost like prosecution without due process.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” I said. “I assume the court sees it that way, too.”
“Honestly? We never find out. We make it to discovery, and not any further. The feds file motions arguing that to provide materials and testimony requested during discovery would jeopardize national security. The court agrees and the cases go nowhere, just get dismissed. You can’t argue without evidence.”
Homeland Security eventually set up a system for travelers tagged on the NFWL to file a protest to seek removal. The central oddity of that process, however, was that you were never told of their decision. All findings were kept secret. There was no information to inform the traveler if they were still listed. Ultimately, a process identified as the Travelers Redress Inquiry Program was established and protesting meant you were given a case number, which is typed into a field when booking flights. My number has eliminated most of my travel issues but there are still flights where I get a message to “see agent” and I have been hand checked a few times over the past several years. I still do not have any information on why I was placed on such a list, nor do I ever expect to learn the facts of my case.
The inconveniences I have suffered for my travel now appear a bit quaint. Americans find themselves today living in a nation with an amoral convict holding the highest office in the land, a man who delights in watching people being tackled on the street, pulled from their homes, and sent to foreign prisons even though they are legally in this country. He is slowly obliterating the fundamental constitutional right to due process, to confront your accusers and demand evidence of their claims. Anyone alive and within the boundaries of this country has always been afforded due process, regardless of their status, nationality, race, religion, or politics. The entirety of the American construct rests on the law and the right to due process, to confront your accusers. Instead, we have a president who is making unilateral decisions, determining by his opinion who is a criminal or a gang member, and having them deported to a violent prison where the incarcerators are being paid millions by this country to house the guilty and the innocent.
His lying is destroying the law and any residual belief Americans might have had in the functioning of their democracy. In an attempt to justify the illegal arrest and deportation of Kilmar Garcia Abrego, who is being held in a prison in El Salvador, the president claimed Garcia Abrego was a member of the violent street gang MS-13. Because there is no proof of the allegations, the White House decided to manufacture evidence and offer the public a poorly photoshopped picture that is alleged to be the left hand of Garcia Abrego. The letters and numbers were added to the knuckles shown in the photo, contextually misplaced in darker ink and facing different directions than the other marks on the fingers. The photo looks as if it were placed on the roller of an old Olympia typewriter and positioned for the keys to strike with maybe an Arial font. It’s funny and pathetic but also terrifyingly sad that the spray-tanned serial philanderer, adjudicated rapist, and convicted felon is trying to use morality and a fake photo to make his point.
An earlier picture of Garcia Abrego’s hand shows no such markings regarding MS-13. However, if the administration is convinced he is a member of that gang, and has violated the law, they ought to bring him back to the U.S. and convict him with evidence. Instead, the press secretary who records and posts videos of herself praying before she enters the media room, told journalists there was no doubt Garcia Abrego was a violent gang member and that he was never going to return to this country. She apparently has information his lawyers and fellow citizens and courts do not possess.
The hope that citizens of this country have is that the rule of law and due process will survive. Without it, the government can convict anyone by pointing a finger and making accusations. Prisons without convictions in a court of law are nothing more than concentration camps. We have also been here before and are adept at ignoring our own history. During World War II an executive order confined 120,000 Japanese in the U.S. to be incarcerated in what were officially described as War Relocation Authority Camps. These were fenced internment facilities with armed guards, and more than 80,000 of those held were U.S. citizens who were guilty of nothing more than having the wrong genetics. An apology and reparations did not come for more than forty years after the war. And here we are again. But if the federal courts do not stop the current administration from illegal deportations without due process, our democratic republic as we have known it, will cease to exist.
And it will be our own damned fault.
This article was originally published on Texas to the world.
James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.
He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).
His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.
Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”
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I thought the MS13 was photoshopped too but someone pointed out that it's to show you that each symbol under it means M and then S and then 1 and then 3. I can see the M and S but not sure why a cross means 1 and a skull means 3.....