Hassan Aden, former Police Chief of Greeneville, NC, arrived at JFK airport on his way back from Paris with his family. This is where the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP, aka Trump’s Gestapo) allegedly detained him, telling him that “someone on the watch list was using his name as an alias.”
“On all of my prior trips, I was greeted by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol [sic] (CBP) officers with a warm smile and the usual, ‘Welcome home sir’,” he said.
...
“I was in a room with no access to my mobile phone to communicate with my wife and family about what was happening, my movements were restricted to a chair, and they had my passport, and he had the audacity to tell me I was not being detained,” Aden said.
You are free to go, but we have your passport, your phone...and you can’t get out of that chair. He’s former law enforcement, I’m sure he knows his rights, and I’m sure in normal times some kids with badges would get fired, like, yesterday.
“This country now feels cold, unwelcoming, and in the beginning stages of a country that is isolating itself from the rest of the world and its own people in an unprecedented fashion,” Aden said.
Truly. All emphasis mine, but really it’s his. These are not normal times.
I’m thinking, they have his passport, they can see he is who he says he is...did they tell him that someone on the watch list is using his name? So they knew he wasn’t the guy on the watch list, they just kept him anyway, just to be sure?
There is so much wrong with this. The bottom line is, there seems to be no oversight with the CBP- the executive order that granted them the authority to do whatever they want to whoever they want for as long as they want seems to still be in effect. That’s not supposed to be the way this country works...but…new normal, I guess.