FBI to Muslims: 'Become informant or face deportation'

RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday July 11, 2006

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been detaining Muslim immigrants, holding their green cards hostage, and threatening deportation unless the detainee agrees to become a government informant, today's WALL STREET JOURNAL is reporting.

In one case reported by the paper, a man was detained at a Canadian-U.S. border crossing and forced to travel to California by bus. He was given instructions on what he was to do after arriving in San Francisco. Once meeting an FBI agent, the gentleman was given the choice of becoming an informant or being deported back to Morocco.

The full registration-restricted article may be read here. Excerpts follow:

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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."