Who Made Cooperation With Law Enforcement "Inherently Suspect"?!

By Michael Cutler

I would be the first one to tell you that it is essential that when we consider the investigations of ethnic organized crime groups and terrorist organizations that we be careful to not paint with a broad brush and vilify all members of an ethnic group or other such manner of generalizing. It is that sort of mind-set that breeds hatred and prejudice. However, this article is absolutely outrageous! It focuses on how members of the "Pakistani community" (a term used by the author of the article) have become mistrustful of each other because they fear that their neighbors might be FBI informants, yet not a single word in the article expresses the least bit of concern that their neighbors might be terrorists or terrorist supporters! I wonder whether the author of the article would react to a citizen of Pakistan alerting authorities to a terrorist plot by considering such a patriot as a traitor!

Consider the fact that Hamid Hayat, the defendant who was convicted of providing support to a terrorist organization while his father, an ice cream truck driver who was acquitted of terror-related charges, pleaded guilty to lying about the amount of money he took out of the country, a crime in and of itself. The article makes some truly incredible assertions, for example: "Members of the Pakistani community here distrust one another almost as much as they do outsiders. Even now, residents with evidence of sudden wealth, like a new car, are immediately rumored to be on the F.B.I.’s payroll. Anything connected to the government is inherently suspect. Some people have stopped home visits by social service agencies; others have balked at writing their Social Security numbers on government documents. Some residents returning from Pakistan avoid including their Lodi addresses on their United States customs forms."

It would appear that the goal of the article was to emphasize that our efforts to combat terrorists who might seek to enter our country to embed themselves here are somehow unreasonable. The article quoted those who were dissatisfied with the guilty verdict of Hamid Hayat and they gloss over the fact that his father did plead guilty to the crime of lying about the amount of money he sent out of the United States.

Perhaps in this climate that has been created by politicians, including the President, who are apparently willing to ignore immigration laws and the need to secure our nation's borders has set a precedent of sorts. Perhaps people now believe it is acceptable to "cherry pick" laws and regulations and blithely disregard those lose and regulations that don't seem important or are inconvenient. Effective leaders need to lead by example. Simply saying, "Do as I say; not as I do," sends a very wrong message. When Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker of the House of Representatives and third in line to the succession of the Presidency, went to Mexico City in October 2003 and decried the arrest of illegal aliens by ICE special agents working as part of the cleaning and maintenance crews at WalMart, she compared the entirely lawful arrest of those illegal aliens with an act of terror! In so doing, what message did she think she was sending? When the Senate passed its immigration bill last session, S.2611, which would have rewarded illegal aliens with the ability to work in the United States and even gain Social Security benefits if they worked under stolen identities, what message did that outrageous legislation send? Now we see where politicians are once again proposing amnesty and United States citizenship for illegal aliens who have violated our nation's borders and other provisions of the immigration laws of this country; what is the lesson to be learned? It would appear that the lesson is simple; run through our nation's borders, ignore and violate our nation's laws, and our political "leaders" cannot wait to reward you for your illegal conduct. While these politicians trip over each other to reward illegal conduct committed by people who do not even have the legal right to be here, are they giving any thought to how their outrageous conduct will embolden illegal aliens and others to commit still more violations of our laws and place our lives and our nation's survival in jeopardy?

It would appear that the message being sent has been heard by those who appear comfortable with vilifying the special agents of ICE, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies who are working diligently to protect our nation against crime and future terrorist attacks!

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