AMERICA THE DUTIFUL?

Dan Hughes' future sister-in-law, Beate (Bay-ah-tah), incarcerated by Homeland Security. Check out the article here in the Gazette.

Turned Away at Border

The love story of Trevor Hughes and his fiancee began in an elementary school in the Himalayan foothills.

They were "global nomads." He was a diplomat's son. She the daughter of missionaries. They lived in Asia, attended school together, fell in love and want to get married in June.

But when Hughes' fiancee, a German national, tried to visit him on a six-month tourist visa Monday, she was detained in Atlanta, handcuffed, jailed--even stripped of her diamond engagement ring.

Then, after 20 hours without food, she was put on a plane and shipped back to Stuttgart.

"This isn't the America I fought for," said Hughes, who served in the Navy and U.S. diplomatic corps. "You don't expect that from a great country like ours."

Trevor says,

"Two things need to be accomplished to begin to correct this injustice:

1. There must be a high level inquiry into this situation, a records review and a full reversal of all that has happened. All records pertaining to this incident that are not deemed essential for security or relate to an infraction of the law (which will be none) must be destroyed and removed from any computer system so that Beate can travel freely to this country after being given a new and legal tourist visa.

2. Oversight must be installed for this specific immigration issue. A personal second opinion must be mandatory for a situation like this and the "good old boy" system must not override the dignity and rights of the human beings involved. The holes in the system that allow non-criminals to be treated as criminals for "procedural reasons" must be proactively addressed with new policy outlining how non-criminal foreign citizens being denied entry into the United States are to be treated; how said foreign citizens' right to counsel are to be handled and what right to appeal to a person or body acting as oversight to the immigration officials making these decisions is to be undertaken.

It is not right for a person, especially a visitor to our country, to be told that they are both innocent of any wrong doing and not suspected of anything to be handcuffed and processed into a city prison system with actual criminals. That procedure does not follow the logical and systematic rule for the use of proportionate force.

The punishment must fit the crime, and if there is no crime..."