Do not deport

Washington Monthly, April, 2004 by Charles Peters

Kari Rein is a Norwegian who is married to an American citizen. She and her husband have lived in Williams, Ore., for 15 years. They run a small business and have a 14-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son.

Recently, as she was returning from a vacation in Norway, Rein was stopped at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport by the Burean of Immigration and Enforcement of the Department of Homeland Security. Officials told her they had to clear a few things up. "I thought they would let me go in an hour or two," she told Ashbel Green of the Portland Oregonian. Instead, her husband and children were ordered to return home, and she was put in jail.

Why? It seems that she had a conviction on her record. Ten years ago, she had been found guilty of growing six marijuana plants. The judge in the case, having determined that she had grown the plants for personal use, and that she and her husband were good citizens, put her on probation. Before and after that episode, her record has been blameless. Her husband has managed to get her out on bail, but only after she'd been taken to court in handcuffs and shackles. The immigration service calls her "an aggravated felon" and still intends to deport her.

When the Immigration and Naturalization Service was made part of the Department of Homeland Security, I warned that simply putting it into a new agency would not solve its problems. It had been a perennial finalist in the competition for the title of Worst Government Agency. Now, instead of being reformed, its worst tendencies seem to have been exacerbated by the Bush administration.