More Drug War Idiocy - with a Dash of Immigration Stupidity

Here is another unfortunate victim of drug prohibition mania's human meat grinder, which daily wrecks the lives of 10's of 1000's of otherwise responsible peaceful people snared in its medieval jaws.

This particularly-disgusting law enforcement idiocy not surprisingly began with the Department of Home(Father)land Security by way of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

BRITON JAILED IN US IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN
FOR 'THIRD OF A JOINT'

A Briton who has lived and worked legally in America for 35 years, married a US citizen and raised three children there, has been locked up in a New Jersey jail after falling victim to a draconian immigration crackdown prompted by the Sept 11 2001 terror attacks.

Paul Clements, 58, a permanent US resident and former tour manager for bands such as the Rolling Stones and Dire Straits, is threatened with expulsion from his adopted homeland after his passport and green card were confiscated following a work trip abroad.

He now spends his days in a khaki prison jumpsuit as his case works its way through the US legal system and his wife and teenage daughter were reduced to tears when they saw him chained and in handcuffs in a recent court appearance.

"I was brought up to believe my country practised the rule of law and I'm just stunned that Clem is being treated like this," said his American wife Robin Schwartz, 59 a wedding photographer, at the family home in the quiet New Jersey commuter town of Sparta last week.

"If it wasn't so upsetting, it would be like something out of Monty Python. When I visit him, it's just like the movies. We are separated by flexiglass and have to shout through slats to talk to each other. It's soul-destroying."

The turmoil in their lives has its roots in a night out with friends at a local pub in 2002. On the way home, Mr Clements, a manager at a large events production company, was arrested on suspicion of drink driving and police found a third of a joint of marijuana in his car.

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He was fined, put on a year's probation and ordered to attend drug information classes as punishment for possession of 0.8 grams of marijuana, an amount so small that the authorities would not prosecute in many American cities, including neighbouring New York.

The offence did not leave him subject to the threat of deportation and he thought no more of the incident, even as he flew in and out of the country on subsequent trips overseas. But in late-May, he was held for several hours at New York's Kennedy airport as he arrived home from a work trip to Italy....

Read the Rest Here.

Any tour manager for Dire Straits is first-rate in my book.

Really, what in God's name is accomplished by prosecuting and jailing this man?

All I see is a waste of taxpayer money to rack one up for some over-ambitious low-level federalies, while affirming the truly idiotic judgment of whatever law enforcement buffoon(s) actually had this guy go to the airport to be arrested and imprisoned indefinitely in an immigration jail.

His traumatized wife sadly summed up what is really accomplished by our Orwellian alphabet-soup federal government...she called it "soul-destroying".

Destroying other people's souls through persecution like this is the work of those who must themselves have no souls. Such people must be robotic creatures unfettered by conscience on any level, people of the variety who would carry out officially-sanctioned torture of prisoners. To call them human beings would be a stretch.

This man's imprisonment alone is torture, in my view, and an affront to any reasonable notion of human rights. This is what we continue permitting our government to do in our names.

This madness has to end NOW and NOT decades into the distant future. This horrific war on people is a stain on our society and a clear and present danger to human rights and civil liberty.

[H/T Cindy]