The story of Jake Johnston, a Salem native and friend of University freshmen Jay Rowan and Thomas Maffai, is just short of ridiculous. And the ridicule doesn’t belong to Johnston or his family, but to the hypervigilance of government officials who think they will somehow stop all evildoers by trampling on common sense and freedom.
Nineteen years ago, Johnston’s parents were living in northern Washington and rushed across the border to the nearest hospital to have their child. Paperwork was never completed, by his parents or by immigration officials, and so on March 24, Johnston was detained while trying to re-enter the United States after a spring break overnighter to Mexico. He was promptly incarcerated in San Diego for more than two weeks.
What’s amazing about this story is that his release required significant intervention by Johnston’s friends, who collected signatures on petitions and contacted elected officials to ask for help.
The government has said it is making renewed efforts to “connect the dots,” a catchphrase that became popularized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The newly created Department of Homeland Security, which currently oversees immigration, is supposed to be able to combine the workings of hundreds of other agencies and departments into one giant bureaucracy that can see all of the dots at once — in order to connect them.
But is anyone really safer since this effort? Sure, as long as you don’t cross the border with a bureaucratic snafu in your past. Is it really possible that there was no one in the immigration office at the Mexican border who could see the insanity of detaining Johnston and throwing him in jail? No one in that office had the common sense to connect the dots and see Johnston isn’t a terrorist?
Apparently, no is the answer. Johnston’s mother went into bankruptcy pleading her son’s case and paying for a lawyer. Either the government is going overboard, or a dangerous terrorist is free in Salem, waiting to make his move after 19 years of laying low in order to pull off this clever ploy. We hope the sarcasm is evident in the latter choice.
What’s also amazing about this story is that Johnston was let out at all. Kudos to his friends and family for pushing the issue. But how many other stories with similar details exist out there and no one hears the cries? Would this story have ended the same way if Johnston was black or Hispanic, or Middle Eastern? It seems unlikely. What would have happened if the family hadn’t intervened? When would officials have come to their senses?
The lesson is that much of America’s infrastructure is porous. It’s designed that way, so freedom can flourish. It means that sometimes, people with bad intentions get access where they shouldn’t. Look at the example of the U.S. soldier suspected of a grenade attack against Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait just four days into the war with Iraq.
Americans will never be completely safe, no matter how large the bureaucracy, no matter how wide-ranging the powers to squash freedom and civil liberties. But the less porous American life becomes, the more it will resemble a totalitarian regime. Let’s be hypervigilant against that for a change.
War on terror claims casualty: government’s common sense
Daily Emerald
April 14, 2003
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