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September 22, 2004
Access Denied
First there was Teddy Kennedy's name on the no-fly high risk list, now the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens has been denied entry to the United States.
One official said Mr. Islam, 56, was identified by the Advanced Passenger Information System, which requires airlines to send passenger information to Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center. The Transportation Security Administration then was contacted and requested that the plane land at the nearest airport, that official said.
The second official said Mr. Islam was questioned by FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. After the interview, customs officials decided to deny the former singer entry into the United States. He was expected to be returned to London today, the official said.
I'm not sure why 'Mr. Islam' is such a threat, but I would feel much better about the system if he had been identified & removed from the plane before take-off. It's things like this that make me wonder just how effective the whole program is....and the heart-stopping experience we just had coming back from Jamaica.
We were coming through Immigration on our way home, chatting with the very nice officer about my daughter's wedding when she swiped Mike's passport through the scanner and stopped....frowned and re-swiped it a couple of times. At first I didn't think too much about it, Mike's passport is one of the older types and I just thought the scanner was having problems reading it.
Then she said "Hmmm. I've never had this screen pop up before. I'm not sure what this means. Have you been out of the country lately?"
Mike told her that yes, we'd gone on a cruise to Mexico in the spring, but there'd been no problems when we came back through Immigration. She consulted in hushed tones with another officer, then finally after several minutes said "Well, I'm not sure why it did that because that's not even close to your name." She wouldn't tell us what the problem was, just told us not to worry about it and that we could go.
We got the hell out of there before she changed her mind, and I was silently thanking the good Lord with every weak-kneed step for directing us to what was probably the only officer in there who used to live in our neighboring city of Rogers.
It was a good day to meet a fellow hillbilly.
Posted by Rita at September 22, 2004 06:48 AM
Comments
He probably got stopped because of his statements supporting the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Posted by: Keith at September 22, 2004 08:18 AM
Or maybe for his support for Hamas et al. I've been reading around this morning that Mr. Islam is supposedly quite the anti-Semetic activist. I should get out more I guess, but I had no idea.
Posted by: rita at September 22, 2004 09:58 AM
Ooh. Didn't know about the Hamas thing.
Bad Mr. Islam! Bad!
Posted by: Keith at September 22, 2004 12:10 PM
Welcome back! Re: Mike's experience. I have noticed that officials will sometimes comment to each other for no other reason than to elicit a reaction. I am not saying that this was the case, but I generally give them the benefit of the doubt.
Posted by: Bill at September 22, 2004 02:01 PM