Conscious Choice Seattle: Hard Knocks

December 2005 | EM Column

Hard Knocks

McCarthyism meets its match in present-day treatment of immigrants and Muslims

By Silja J.A. Talvi

I was a 7-year-old immigrant to this country.

My family, half-American and half-Finnish, did not come here to flee persecution of any kind. We did not move here, to this country, with a great deal of money—nor were we penniless. We moved into a family home. My parents found work right away in Hollywood as musicians.

Like most immigrant kids, I struggled adjusting to school, life and culture in the U.S. I spoke some English, but I knew none of the slang. For a good portion of my childhood I felt alienated from everything around me.

I think about this every time I see an immigrant family walking down the street here in Seattle—whether in the form of a modestly-attired, observant Somali Muslim mother with her young girl in tow or an Eritrean father taking a break from his work shift to help his kid with homework. I think about what these families have left behind, and about the challenges they and their children are likely to face.

The persistence and determination of refugees and immigrants are beautiful things to witness; it is, after all, a huge part of our country’s foundation and our nation’s dynamic character.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I turned on the small television in the kitchen at the same time that I set the water kettle to boil. The minutes and hours that followed are seared into my memory.

I wept first and foremost for the victims of 9/11.

I wept next for what I was afraid of, and what came to be true. Many thousands of honest, kind and innocent immigrants to this country were about to pay a very heavy price for the extremism of a few infiltrators.

Two new books, Tram Nguyen’s, We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11 (Beacon Press), and James Yee’s For God and Country (Public Affairs Books) are among the first to describe how many immigrants, Muslims and people have color have fared in this sweeping, unfocused War on Terror of ours.

An estimated 11,000 individuals of Muslim, Arab and/or South Asian descent were approached during post-9/11 interrogations, many of whom then “disappeared” for weeks or months on end into the country’s expansive, increasingly secretive immigrant detention system. These interrogations often came in the form of midnight or early morning knocks on the front door by armed agents.

“Special registration,” ordering non-citizen teens and adult men from 25 countries to register with the government, resulted in nearly 14,000 people being placed in deportation hearings. Already, some 3,000 have been deported for immigration violations of one sort or another, but not one of these have been related to “terroristic” activity. In addition, as Nguyen writes in her book, untold numbers of Muslim and Middle Eastern men in custody have been harassed and beaten, without any evidence whatsoever of any criminal or terroristic association.

‘Disappeared’ chaplain

Among those detained and “disappeared” for a time was Army Chaplain James Yee, a third-generation Chinese American (and West Point graduate) whose family had long, impressive track record in the military. Yee converted to Islam and later became one of the Army’s first Muslim Chaplains.

Eventually, Yee was specially selected to serve at Guantanamo Bay, where he worked diligently to provide nearly 700 Muslim detainees with religious accommodations, to ease tensions and help to establish special operating procedures for handling this unique group of unnamed and unrepresented captives. (As was the case then, only a few of the remaining 500 have even been charged with crimes and none have POW status or right to counsel.)

For serving his country in this highly tense environment, Yee was awarded with several military awards and commendations.

Yee was then acknowledged in a different way altogether. On his way back home to be reunited with his wife and child in Olympia, Yee was instead detained and interrogated, then shackled, blindfolded, humiliated and eventually “disappeared” to a super maximum-security prison.

Chaplain Yee was accused of treason, among other charges, although he was not even informed of those charges for a long time. Yee endured 76 days in total solitude, bearing the poor treatment and verbal insults of fellow officers who regularly made him strip and subject himself to humiliating cavity searches.

None of the charges wound up sticking. Those charges apparently were fabricated out of thin air. Today, Yee is a free man, reunited with his family and is on a national speaking tour that is a justifiable embarrassment to the people who dragged his name and image through the press.

“I hope and I pray that, with regard to my experiences, that history doesn’t ever repeat itself,” Yee said recently during an event at the downtown Seattle Public Library.

Regrettably, the abuses of justice and of our constitution continue to this day. We fool ourselves as American citizens if we think we can separate “ourselves” from the plight of “others” who are being unfairly treated, detained and deported.

Rampant xenophobia denigrates the whole of our society and has not made us any safer in the process. It’s something to consider the next time you see an immigrant family in your neighborhood.

Silja J.A. Talvi is an award-winning journalist and columnist for Evergreen Monthly.

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