This is bizarre and disturbing, if true. Cardinal Jaime Ortega of Havana says he was detained by Homeland Security over the weekend at Miami’s airport. He said agents pulled him aside and questioned him on his views on Fidel Castro and the US trade embargo. The cardinal says when he refused, the agent said he was opening a “dangerous person” file on him. He says he was treated “rudely and curtly.”
What is this? Cardinal Ortega is no friend of the Cuban Communists, but as the leader of Cuba’s Catholics he has to work with the government to get things done. He is no collaborator, as anyone who has followed the situation in Cuba knows. (I’ve written and edited many stories at Catholic World News and in Catholic World Report over the years about Cuba’s Catholics and the Cardinal in particular.) What Homeland Security expected to accomplish by this harassment is baffling.
The US government admits that the cardinal was detained, but claims he was “treated in the utmost courteous manner.”
I have no trouble believing that he was treated rudely and curtly. Everyone passing through an airport is treated rudely and curtly even U.S. Senators.
Ditto. My favorite moment was seeing two active duty soldiers from the First Air Calvary Div. in their desert uniforms (but without their booots on of course!) being frisked by some idiot at Portland Airport. Priceless.
MS
You know one of my former students was training to work security at Logan Airport last spring. A nice girl, but like many of my students she’s young, inexperienced, knows very little of the world apart from what she sees on television.
I think Patrick and Michael have a good point: many of the people doing the frisking and questioning really don’t have a clue.
Makes me feel safe.
I don’t think the agents described in the article are low-level TSA screeners. They were described as agents of Homeland Security.
Think of the officials shown in the movie “Terminal” we just watched the other night. I think they were higher-level and the way they phrased the questions imply that at least a mid-level decision had been made to detain the cardinal.
You’re right, though, that the stories I hear do not encourage confidence. After all, the list of banned materials does not prevent even a moderately determined person from bringing potentially deadly items onto an airplane. A CD in the wrong hands is a deadly weapon. So is a zipper. Or a ballpoint pen.
But that’s another topic.
Maybe Homeland Security doesn’t know the background of the Cardinal as you do Dom and perhaps they should find out before they detain someone, but I’m thinking bc he’s from a communist state it might be “protocol” to question him.
On the other hand, the 9/11 terrorists passed through Logan bc they didn’t want to “profile” people…….