The Last Word
Dorfman, Ron
THE LAST WORD Ron Dorfman The Enemy Within We have lost control of our borders and the enemy is within. Paradoxically but inevitably, we got into this mess by trying to avoid it. At least three...
...foreign policy in Central America...
...Customs Service and FBI agents have been engaged in a less than subtle display of political muscle against Americans returning from Nicaragua who appear not to be playing on the Reagan Administration's team...
...airports with valid visas...
...He was scheduled to participate in conferences at New York University, Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, and DePaul University's Institute for Church-State Relations in Chicago, but his request for a visa was denied...
...Raoul Gomez Treto, legal adviser to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Havana, did not get turned back at the border...
...One of the Colombians, who had planned to be in Miami only briefly on a stopover between Rome and Mexico City, was allowed to stay overnight at a hotel and then was sent on her way...
...The favored tactic has been to seize books, journals, address books, research notes, even private letters from the luggage of returning travelers, forcing the victims to petition or sue for their return and, in the meantime, photocopying them for who knows what distribution...
...She is appealing the deportation order...
...Clearly, the Government's effort to seal off the border against subversive ideas has failed...
...Although she was born in this country and her husband, parents, and children are all U.S...
...Somehow, the ultimate subversive idea slipped through—that it is the Government's responsibility to protect us from dangerous foreign thoughts and the dangerous foreign people who might communicate them...
...An alumna of Columbia University's graduate school of journalism, she had come at the University's invitation to attend the annual presentation of the Maria Moors Cabot Awards, which honor reporters and editors for contributions to freedom of the press and improved understanding between the United States and Latin America...
...In addition to representing the Church, Gomez Treto is legal adviser to the National Union of Cuban Jurists— in effect, the Cuban bar association—and that, apparently, makes him a government agent...
...citizens, Randall was subject to deportation because, in her youth, she thoughtlessly gave up her citizenship to be eligible for a better-paying job in Mexico, where she lived most of her life...
...Her name was found among the 40,000 listed in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's "Lookout Book" of nonadmittable foreigners...
...Under court order, the Customs Service late in August issued a directive reminding its agents that the law permits them to seize only those materials that would cause "imminent harm" to the United States...
...Under Treasury Department regulations, no American may visit Cuba except for journalists, scholars, and persons with Ron Dorfman is a free-lance writer in Chicago...
...His American lawyer said the State Department told her the action was taken under a Presidential directive that denies visas to officials or employees of the Cuban government...
...She had written critically about U.S...
...Among the books seized was a copy of the CIA manual on how to be a more effective guerrilla...
...The Belgian, stopped when agents found "communist documents" in his luggage, was ultimately admitted...
...U.S...
...The Center for Constitutional Rights filed several suits against the practice, including a class-action suit brought last April in Federal district court in Los Angeles...
...And if the Government is responsible for the information that slips across the border, can it fail to take responsibility for the information that we produce here at home...
...After that, it was simple corrosion that led to the notion that the Government should also protect us from information that we ourselves bring back from abroad...
...Expatriate American writer Margaret Randall, who had returned to the United States to live, was refused a green card and ordered deported by an immigration judge in El Paso who found the political values expressed in her books unacceptable...
...She was arrested and held in a Federal prison for five days before being deported on October 17...
...relatives living on the island...
...The other Colombian, Patricia Lara of Bogota's El Tiempo, was also listed in the "Lookout Book...
...he never got that far...
...And no one may bring back to the United States more than one copy of any Cuban book or publication...
...Among those affected was Thomas Walker of Ohio State University, the Latin American Studies Association's observer at the Nicaraguan elections, whose notes were confiscated...
...At least three times in recent weeks, immigration and customs officials have detained foreign journalists—a Belgian and two Colombians—who arrived at U.S...
...What that may mean in practice is anyone's guess, and the lawsuit is continuing...
Vol. 50 • December 1986 • No. 12
