WSJ: A Muslim's Choice: Turn U.S. Informant Or Risk Losing Visa

[Rose Siding]

Last November, when Yassine Ouassif crossed into Champlain, N.Y., from Canada, border agents questioned him for several hours. Then they took away his green card and sent him home to San Francisco by bus, with strict instructions: As soon as he got there, he was to call a man named Dan.

Dan, it turned out, was Daniel Fliflet, a counterterrorism agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Ouassif met the agent at an Oakland subway station on Nov. 30, and the two men walked the streets together for 90 minutes.

Mr. Fliflet told the 24-year-old Moroccan that he'd been monitoring his friends and him for many months, Mr. Ouassif recalls. Mr. Fliflet made him an offer: Become an informant and regularly report to the FBI on what his Muslim friends in San Francisco were saying and doing. In exchange, he would get back his green card. He could resume his education, bring his Moroccan wife to America, and pursue his dream of buying a car, moving to Sacramento and becoming an engineer.

If he refused? asked Mr. Ouassif. "I will work hard to deport you to Morocco as soon as possible," Mr. Fliflet responded, according to an account written by Mr. Ouassif soon after the meeting. "I want you to know something important," the FBI agent added, according to Mr. Ouassif. "America is just like a bus, and you have a choice to make: Either you board the bus or you leave."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115258258431002991-0_UDjvkTkuNpeCUOfOuPJiwQDTU_20060718.html?mod=blogs

America's a bus and the internet is a truck.

[Vidar]

1. Quilsings, Cheneys & Roves, oh my!

[ovidsen]

2. This is not how a free country works

This article really bothered me. The FBI and ICE are using intimidation and blackmail in ways that can only result in bogus arrests and worse.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, I was told this was the way the Commies ran things, turning friend against friend and relative against relative to create an atmosphere where nobody trustsed nobody.

Surprise!! We have met the enemy and all that....

Recommended. I hope more people read this.

[varun]

3. This is not good

My friend from Cuba told me that this is what happened in his country...now its happening here.