Branson, Missouri, is not exactly the birthplace of sophistication. Perhaps it was just an innocent mistake when, on September 9, 2008, agents with the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested a Samoan man, Hans Joachim Keil, on the suspicion that Keil was not in the country legally.
See, Keil is a U.S. citizen. He has dual citizenship here and in Samoa and has lived in the U.S. for over 40 years. He also served for four years in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Keil is also a Samoan diplomat, and in that capacity, he makes frequent stops in Branson to check on a troupe of Samoan dancers who perform in a show called "Island Fire" at the Dutton Family Theater. The dancers are in the country on work visas, and have little contact with their families, so Keil would stop by to relay packages and messages to and from the island. (The human-trafficking investigation did not result in any charges against the theater.)
It shouldn't have taken the authorities long to determine that Keil is legit. But instead of being released with an apology, immigration officials and the U.S. Department of State kept Keil in jail for nine days on charges of "False Claim of Citizenship."
"ICE was investigating the troupe and the Duttons, thinking there was
some human trafficking going on there," says Michael Sharma-Crawford,
an immigration attorney who, with his partner, Rekha, worked to get
Keil released.
Crawford explains that in their investigation, ICE
officials dug up Keil's application for a passport from when he came to
the U.S. through Hawaii at 17 with his mother and brother. Some lines
on the document were struck through, and according to Crawford, ICE
investigators determined that the passport was fraudulent. "So one fine
day, they (ICE special agents) show up at theater and arrest him for
fraud on a U.S. Passport," Crawford says. But, as a U.S. citizen,
"(ICE) shouldn't be allowed to touch him."
They touched him, all
right, booking him at the Green County, Missouri, jail on an ICE
detainer. The ICE agents allegedly referred to Keil as an "illegal
alien" at the time of his arrest and seized his U.S. and Samoan
Diplomatic Passports.
Due to bond restrictions, Keil wasn't
allowed to leave Missouri for four months while his lawyers worked to
resolve the issue.On December 12, 2008, the government reinstated
Keil's citizenship and dropped all charges against him.
Now, through the Sharma-Crawford Attorneys at Law,
Keil is filing suit against Glenn Triveline, the acting field office director of ICE in Kansas City, three other ICE
agents and special agent Jack Barnhart of the State Department's
Diplomatic Security Service. Keil's petition to the U.S. District Court
in the Western District of Missouri asks for a jury trial to decide
whether to award him actual and punitive damages for being unlawfully
detained for nine days, being denied the opportunity to contact his
embassy, being denied the ability to leave Missouri for nearly four
months to attend to diplomatic duties or personal interests, and his
pain and suffering.
"He is really afraid to come back to the
United States," Michael Sharma-Crawford says. "He really is. There was
never any doubt in his mind that he is a legal U.S. citizen."
In
her press release, Rekha Sharma-Crawford wrote, "Although Immigration,
the State Department and Department of Justice officials eventually
acknowledged Mr. Keil's legitimate claim to U.S. citizenship, it should
not have taken three months to resolve the issue."
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I have known Mr. Keil for many years. He is meek, gentle, and very dignified and a very patriotic American. In Branson, the U.S. immigration officers treated him with tremendous malice- they seized his U.S. passport, mocked his claim of being a veteran from the Viet Nam era, slammed him in hand and leg shackles, at the jail threw him in an orange perp suit, and put him in a concrete cell with drug dealers, rapists, etc.
After nine days of mistreatment, they released him to his daughter's home, and then came there to harass him. He could not leave the county, could not get his diplomatic papers back, and was under constant threat. They never did return some of his papers.
My father was in law enforcement for his entire career, and always treated people he arrested with dignity. I am sure you have met similar good law enforcement officers who are professional in doing their job.
The immigration officials who arrested Joe Keil are a different story. The sad truth is that ICE is out of control in this country; in my opinion they see themselves more like storm troopers than law enforcement officers. Citizens and non-citizens alike are under threat of abuse from ICE officers; they think that no once they abuse can complain or have any legal recourse, and that none of the people they deal with have any rights at all. This brave Vietnam veteran, Joe Keil, is standing up all of us through his law suit.I applaud him.
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