American Ninja Posted May 3, 2005 Share Posted May 3, 2005 Then they came for the children Aspen Times | May 3, 2005 They've vanished into the netherworld of a Homeland Security gulag and their story has already disappeared from the headlines, but the shocking case of two 16-year-old girls from New York City arrested a month ago ought to inspire outrage among every American worthy of the name. Since the government's reasons for the girls' imprisonment could apply to virtually any teenager, it should also spark fear. Like many rebellious teens, I fought with my mother. Local police, called to my home during at least one particularly impressive clash of wills and voices, talked us back into the land of the calmly reasonable. Then they left. Like many young people, I was fascinated by morbid, violent subjects. After I turned in an essay depicting a political assassination from the killer's viewpoint, my creative writing teacher sent me to talk to my guidance counselor. After I assured him that I had no desire to knock off any politicians, he returned me to class. A quarter century later, my mom and I are best friends and I haven't done anything the Secret Service ought to worry about. Right now, however, two girls from New York City are rotting in a HomeSec prison in Pennsylvania for doing nothing more than I did - one for fighting with her parents and writing an essay, the other accused of being her friend. In early March, the New York Times reported on April 7, one girl's parents "went to the local police station house" in the Queens Village neighborhood because "their daughter...had defied their authority." Things calmed down and the parents, believing their daughter had been scared straight, asked the NYPD to forget the whole thing. It was too late for that. Without a warrant, NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the girl's home - no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama! - where they "searched her belongings and confiscated her computer and the essays that she had written as part of a home schooling program," say her family. "One essay concerned suicide...[that] asserted that suicide is against Islamic law." The family is Bangladeshi. They are Muslim. That, coupled with the mere mention of suicide bombing in her essay, was enough to put the fuzz on high alert. Although she is conservative and devout, the girl and her parents vigorously deny that she is an Islamist extremist (not that such opinions are illegal), but this is post-9/11 America and post-9/11 America is out of its mind. Based solely on an essay written by one of the two, the FBI says both girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to become suicide bombers." But the feds admit that they have no evidence to back their suspicions. Nothing. "There are doubts about these claims, and no evidence has been found that such a plot was in the works," one Bush Administration official admitted to the Times. "The arrests took place after authorities decided it would be better to lock up the girls than wait and see if they decided to become terrorists," another told the New York Post. The same logic could be used to justify locking up any Muslim, or anyone at all. Heck, maybe that's the idea. The Bangladeshi girl, who was homeschooled and wears a veil, says she never even met her outgoing and more Americanized "co-conspirator" from Guinea before the cops accused them of plotting to do ... something. Maybe. She says FBI agents threatened to deport her parents and place her American-born siblings, a 4-month-old baby and an 11-year-old, in foster care unless she confessed. Even in PATRIOT Act-era America, alleged fantasies of martyrdom aren't a crime. So HomeSec's ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is holding both two girls as illegal immigrants - one for entering the U.S. without an inspection, the other for overstaying her visa. And even that charge rests on razor-thin ice: "This is a girl who's been in this country since she was 2 years old," the Guinean girl's teacher says. Ditto for the one from Bangladesh. Holding kids accountable for the actions of their parents is crazy, which is why immigration authorities don't usually do it. Two-year-old babies don't wade across the Rio Grande or overstay their visas. Deporting American teenagers - American in every way that matters - to countries they've never even visited is equally insane. I would be the first to applaud the FBI if they had arrested two proven would-be suicide bombers before they had the chance to strike. If they have evidence to that effect, they should make it public and bring charges in open court. But that's clearly not the case here. When this story first broke I didn't write about it because I assumed that a public outcry would soon lead to its reasonable resolution. Sadly, this has not happened. Homes searched without a warrant, kids thrown in prison for thoughts real and imagined, people's lives destroyed by an out-of-control federal government - will Americans speak up for what's right? Please call and write your congressman and senator to demand the release of the two girls from Queens. Sources: http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20050503/COLUMN/105030020 & http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/homela...or_children.htm Welcome to the new freedom folks: Homes searched without a warrant, kids thrown in prison for thoughts real and imagined, people's lives destroyed by an out-of-control federal government :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PseudoRandomDragon Posted May 3, 2005 Share Posted May 3, 2005 Isn't the Patriot act great? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jamesbmarshall Subscriber¹ Posted May 3, 2005 Subscriber¹ Share Posted May 3, 2005 Isn't that just a bit extreme? What happened to a fair trial?! :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 3, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 3, 2005 Isn't that just a bit extreme? What happened to a fair trial?! :huh: 585868503[/snapback] Presumably, they were found guilty of been islamic without need for a trial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jamesbmarshall Subscriber¹ Posted May 3, 2005 Subscriber¹ Share Posted May 3, 2005 Presumably, they were found guilty of been islamic without need for a trial. 585868523[/snapback] America needs to rethink it's position if thats the case - don't you think there is the potential for it to turn into the Salem Witch Trials all over again? Where we turn into a society of paranoids and snitchers... :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rumbleph1$h Posted May 3, 2005 Share Posted May 3, 2005 Isn't the Patriot act great? 585868465[/snapback] I'm assuming you know nothing of the Patriot Act. Nowhere in the article does it say the Patriot Act was the basis for these detentions. Secondly, this 'article' is a bit biased. It doesn't tell you that both of the girls are in the U.S. illegally. This is at least part of the basis for detaining the girls. Lets not forget that our Constitution guarantees nothing to illegal immigrants - and rightfully so. Also, this quote: "But the feds admit that they have no evidence to back their suspicions. Nothing." is also a bit misleading. Just because they haven't released that information to the public doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Should we take the interpretations of Islamic activists/suspected terrorists and the girls families to be more valid than that of FBI/ law enforcement? If authorities had a real reason to believe these girls intended on acting as suicide bombers, they have every right to have detained them. I trust the FBI's judgment and think the U.S. would have been just as justified in deporting them and their families. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreAming in DigITal Posted May 3, 2005 Share Posted May 3, 2005 Aren't islamic fundamentalists trying to use more and more women to carry out suicide bombings? They used them for the bombing of that airplane in Russia I think....maybe they are suspected of participating in something like this...I guess more details will come out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Veteran Posted May 3, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 3, 2005 Doesn't anyone here rembmer who Ted Rall is? Fire up Google on him, after that tell me if you would beleive a word from his putrid mouth. Can't remember him? Hows this for a refresher? Rall's 'Tillman' Cartoon Pulled by MSNBC.com Here is a blog posting with teh cartoon in question. The guy is a steaming turd. (N) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PseudoRandomDragon Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 Secondly, this 'article' is a bit biased. It doesn't tell you that both of the girls are in the U.S. illegally. This is at least part of the basis for detaining the girls. Lets not forget that our Constitution guarantees nothing to illegal immigrants - and rightfully so. 585868811[/snapback] That changes everything then. Where did you get that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreAming in DigITal Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 Doesn't anyone here rembmer who Ted Rall is? Fire up Google on him, after that tell me if you would beleive a word from his putrid mouth.Can't remember him? Hows this for a refresher? Rall's 'Tillman' Cartoon Pulled by MSNBC.com Here is a blog posting with teh cartoon in question. The guy is a steaming turd. (N) 585868909[/snapback] Damn....That guy is a turd...what a jackass... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 That changes everything then. Where did you get that? 585868992[/snapback] It is in the article if you read it carefully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PseudoRandomDragon Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 Secondly, this 'article' is a bit biased. It doesn't tell you that both of the girls are in the U.S. illegally. 585868811[/snapback] It is in the article if you read it carefully. 585869074[/snapback] Um. Confusing. This can only be sorted with a duel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 Um. Confusing. This can only be sorted with a duel. 585869084[/snapback] from the article: She says FBI agents threatened to deport her parents and place her American-born siblings, a 4-month-old baby and an 11-year-old, in foster care unless she confessed.Even in PATRIOT Act-era America, alleged fantasies of martyrdom aren't a crime. So HomeSec's ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is holding both two girls as illegal immigrants - one for entering the U.S. without an inspection, the other for overstaying her visa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rumbleph1$h Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 Um. Confusing. This can only be sorted with a duel. 585869084[/snapback] lol, i must have missed that somehow? I saw it more heavily emphasized in other sources when i first heard about this a while back. still, this article is a joke. pick any part of it and its only partially true. everything he says is done in a way to slant the article towards his views on the subject - the very definition of propaganda. take "NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the girl's home - no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama!" for example. somehow I was under then impression that FBI and NYPD had very little (or nothing!) to do with 'looking for Osama', and everything to do with securing our homeland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PseudoRandomDragon Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 Article biased or not it pretty much sums up that they had every cause to come into her home being that they were illegal immigrants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 take "NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the girl's home - no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama!" for example. somehow I was under then impression that FBI and NYPD had very little (or nothing!) to do with 'looking for Osama', and everything to do with securing our homeland. 585869100[/snapback] I agree. It's a red herring. The FBI and NYPD are not in the business of finding Osama unless he somehow magically appears on U.S. soil (which is somewhat unlikely). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mAcOdIn Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 (edited) Bear,with,me,my,space,bar,is,broken. Going by what is in the article I find the story pretty troubling. I may not agree with the author on everything but to me the idea of locking up children who came here at the age of two as illegal immigrants is disgusting and uncaring. Maybe we're in the legal clear in this case but I don't see how we're in the moral or compassionate clear. When we have become so cold that a perosns plight doesn't bother or affect us merely because they entered the country illegaly then we no have truly lost our way. Edited May 4, 2005 by fred666 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lav-chan Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 still, this article is a joke. pick any part of it and its only partially true. everything he says is done in a way to slant the article towards his views on the subject - the very definition of propaganda.585869100[/snapback] Why do you guys always do that? TELL US WHY IT'S WRONG. If you're so damned in the know, why don't you educate us about it? Jesus Christ. You can't just come in and wave your cigarette around and go 'pah! i declare, i've never seen such bias in all my life!' and leave it at that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 I think, at best, they made it this far Without a warrant, NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the girl's home - no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama! - where they and then they stopped reading. And I can't say that I blame them. It might be an interesting story but it was told by someone with an axe to grind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lav-chan Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 I agree, that part was flame bait, but that doesn't justify dismissing the rest of the article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 There was an article printed in the New York Times that I can't access but apparently it said: [T]he girl and another 16-year-old are being called would-be suicide bombers and are being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania.According to a government document provided to The New York Times by a federal official earlier this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has asserted that both girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." No evidence was cited, and federal officials will not comment on the case. Among the unanswered questions they raised was why, if she was really a suspect, no F.B.I. agent had shown up to search her school locker or question her classmates, who sent her letters of support. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/nyregion/09suicide.html Some with a NYT subscription should feel free to verify that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 I agree, that part was flame bait, but that doesn't justify dismissing the rest of the article. 585871464[/snapback] That coupled with the fact that the author is avery well known (or so I thought) adversary of any and all things realting to Bush and Conservatives. I am dismissing the article becuase it is very light on facts and heavy on emotional language. First of all what is a cartoonist doing writing news articles? Why hasn't NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, BBC, Al Jazerra, picke dup on this? Why is a fricking cartoonist the first to break it? EDIT: Fred666 just posted the NYT article - damn you simultanaposts! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 Here is that NYT article: Teachers and Classmates Express Outrage at Arrest of Girl, 16, as a Terrorist ThreatAt Heritage High School in East Harlem, where the student idiom is hip-hop and salsa, the 16-year-old Guinean girl stood out, but not just because she wore Islamic dress. She was so well liked that when she ran for student body president, she came in second to one of her best friends - the Christian daughter of the president of the parent-teacher association, Deleen P. Carr. Now Ms. Carr, a speech pathologist who calls herself "a typical American citizen," is as outraged as the girl's teachers and classmates, who have learned that the girl and another 16-year-old are being called would-be suicide bombers and are being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania. "They have painted this picture of her as this person that is trying to destroy our way of life, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is bogus," said Ms. Carr, who welcomed the Guinean girl to her house daily and knows her family well. "I feel like, how dare they? She's a minor, and even if she's not a citizen, she has rights as a human being." According to a government document provided to The New York Times by a federal official earlier this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has asserted that both girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." No evidence was cited, and federal officials will not comment on the case. Its mysteries deepened as teachers and neighbors gave details of the Guinean girl's life, like the jeans she wore under her Muslim garb, her lively classroom curiosity about topics like Judaism and art and her after-school care for four younger siblings while her parents, illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States since 1990, eked out a living. "I just can't fathom this," said her art teacher, Kimberly Lane, who has repeatedly called the youth detention center but like Ms. Carr was not allowed to speak to the girl, who has no lawyer. Among the unanswered questions they raised was why, if she was really a suspect, no F.B.I. agent had shown up to search her school locker or question her classmates, who sent her letters of support. "This is a girl who's been in this country since she was 2 years old," Ms. Lane said. "She's just a regular teenager - like, two weeks ago her biggest worry was whether she'd done her homework or studied for a science test." Until now, attention has focused on the other 16-year-old, a Bangladeshi girl reared in Queens who could not deal with the hurly-burly of her West Side high school and withdrew into home schooling. Yesterday, on a motion of the government, an immigration judge closed the Bangladeshi girl's bond hearing to the public and adjourned it to next Thursday, said Troy Mattes, a lawyer who is taking over the case but has yet to meet her. By the Bangladeshi girl's account, reported by her mother, the girls did not meet until March 24, after their separate arrests in early-morning raids on immigration charges against their parents. Both grew up in Islamic families. But while the Bangladeshi girl had grown increasingly pious, and uncomfortable in the urban culture of the High School of Environmental Studies on West 56th Street, the Guinean girl, a 10th grader, embraced every aspect of Heritage High, at 106th Street and Lexington Avenue, her teachers said. "She is, yes, an orthodox Muslim, but completely integrated into this school," said Jessica Siegel, her English teacher in a class in which topics like teenage pregnancy and world politics were discussed. Ms. Siegel was profiled in the book "Small Victories," by Samuel G. Freedman, as an unsentimental, but fiercely committed teacher who provoked and delighted her students. "She's a wonderful, wonderful girl," Ms. Siegel said. "She's about the last person anyone could imagine being a suicide bomber." The English teacher's most vivid recollection was of a day two months ago when she heard a kind of roar in the hallway of the school, which is full of colorful student collages and life-size sculptures in papier-m?ch?. The teenager had stopped wearing her veil, and she beamed as her fellow students, seeing her face for the first time, cheered. After the class read "Night," the Holocaust memoir by Elie Wiesel, the girl wrote a paper about genocide in the Sudan, she recalled. But she was so excited about a field trip to see Christo's "Gates" in Central Park, Ms. Siegel said, that she skipped an appointment at immigration - a teenage impulse the teacher now worries might have set off problems with federal authorities. Her father is now in immigration jail facing deportation. At Woodrow Wilson Houses a few blocks from the school, a sticker on the family's apartment door reads, "Allah is our protector." Yesterday no one was home, but across the hall, Christine Anderson, a neighbor, shook her head in disbelief when she learned why she had not seen the girl or her father in recent weeks. "Why would they take the lady's daughter?" she asked. "They're nice people, and hard-working people. I've been here four years. I know she's not a problem child." Ms. Lane, the art teacher, said that when Heritage High first learned that immigration agents had picked up the girl, one of her best friends asked if someone from the school might have denounced her as an illegal immigrant. "I remember telling her the government doesn't go after 16-year-old girls," Ms. Lane said. "And in the last few days, I'm wrestling with the fact that, yes, it does." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 Do you feel like posting this one too? (I believe it focusses on the other girl) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/nyregion/08suicide.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Veteran Posted May 4, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 4, 2005 Another: Young and Arrested Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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