$5 Worth of Drugs? 2 Years.

Oh Homeland Security, how I love thee. Let me count the ways…

“Zwerdling’s first report looks at the case of Hemnauth Mohabir, a native of Guyana. In the spring of 2002, Mohabir returned to Guyana to visit his mother, who was ill. On his way back to New York that April, an immigration agent at Kennedy International Airport noticed Mohabir had a criminal record: Six years earlier, he’d been convicted of possessing about $5 worth of drugs. The judge fined him $250 for a misdemeanor and let him go.

Because of that past conviction, Mohabir was deported to Guyana and banned from ever coming back to the United States. But before returning to his native country, Mohabir was detained for almost two years at New Jersey’s Passaic County Jail, where he alleges that guards taunted and beat detainees and terrorized them with dogs. One detainee was attacked by a dog earlier this year and sent to the hospital. Evidence obtained by NPR during the course of a five-month-long investigation suggests Mohabir’s tale of abuse, corroborated by other detainees, is true.”

On my home from finally seeing Napoleon Dynamite with Lazza this afternoon, I caught this story of bogus incarciration and abuse on NPR. Getting thrown in jail for two years, without a charge? I can’t imagine the anger. And then you add the abuse? Leaves me speechless.

Go to NPR and listen to the report. Do it.