The mythical No Fly List is one of those sucky realities that we hear about but really don’t know much about it.
And after the recent Time Square Scare, things are only going to get worse.
But for a very few number of people, things already have. It’s one thing to head off to the airport and be told you can’t fly because your name is something similar to a guy suspected of once accidentally dialing a terrorist a few years ago.
“No fly for you,” the TSA might shout, doing their best impression of the Soup Nazi.
So you head home, call the local paper and then bitch up a storm.
Now, imagine being placed on the No Fly List while you’re abroad. The airlines don’t explain anything — other than you’re not allowed to fly to the U.S. — the US Embassy only harasses you, threatening to steal your passport and you can’t even extend your visa where you’ve been visiting to stay there legally.
You are homeless and you haven’t done anything wrong.
That’s exactly what’s been happening to Raymond Earl Knaeble IV, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Knaeble has been stranded in Columbia, unable to come home and unable to find out why.
“It is un-American and illegal for a citizen who has not been accused of, let alone charged with any crime to be denied entry to his own country without adequate explanation or the possibility of challenging punishments applied without due process of law,” said CAIR Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili, who is Knaeble’s attorney. “We call on the Department of Justice to end Mr. Knaeble’s forced exile and to address the disturbing issue of the other Americans who are similarly being denied re-entry to their own country.”
Indeed. And Knaeble is not alone. According to the Washington Post, there are others around the world who have been arrested and detained for doing nothing wrong. Now, they can’t even return to America to try and clear their name.
There’s just something wrong with this system.
