Welcome to America ... You're Under Arrest

Mr. Sampson, I Presume?

It was about five years ago. I was returning from Pakistan and standing in the immigration line at JFK, completely exhausted after a 20-hour flight. When my turn came up at the counter, the INS agent looked at my papers, typed a few things into his computer, and then asked me to follow him to a large room at the side of the immigration hall. I was informed that I was being detained. Two agents handcuffed me and led me to another smaller room. When I asked what I had done. They said things like, "Oh, you know what you've done. We know who you are."

"Who am I? What have I done?"

"You should know that better than we do, now shouldn't you?"

When I asked to contact a lawyer, I was informed that I hadn't yet been admitted to the United States, and so had no legal standing. No lawyer would be called, nor would I be allowed to call anyone else. They took my cuffs off, fingerprinted me (very difficult because of my sweaty palms), recuffed me, and then left me there.

It was at this point that my knees went a little trembly. I had heard many stories of Pakistanis being held for months without charges under the Patriot Act, and now I had visions of Guantanamo in my head, and I became almost dizzy with the adrenaline rush of fear. I thought that I must have been mistaken for someone else, God knows who, and there would be no chance to clear my name. I sat in that room for a few sweat-drenched hours before a couple of INS officers came in with two police officers from the NYPD. The NYPD officers told me that they had a warrant for my arrest. This immediately came as a huge relief to me, because whatever it was they wanted with me, I would rather be held by the NYPD in New York, than in some INS facility. I felt like whatever it was, I would be able to clear it up.

That's when things started to get weird: The NYPD officers addressed me as Mr. Edward Sampson, as in, "Let's go, Sampson." When I protested that I wasn't Edward Sampson, whoever that might be, they told me that fingerprints don't lie, and I had a full 10-finger match as one (wanted) Edward Sampson. They told me to stop lying and just admit that I really was Edward Sampson. The name sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite place it in my exhausted state. The INS guys removed my cuffs and the NYPD officers replaced them with their own. I was then led out for the perp-walk in front of all the other passengers, coming out by the regular path where people wait for their friends and relatives to come out. People whispered to each other rather excitedly when they saw me being led out, held by each arm by one of the officers, wearing handcuffs and a nice suit I had had tailored while in Pakistan.

It was then that I remembered who Edward Sampson was, and it came to me suddenly: About a decade earlier, my nephew and I had been having a drink at the West End Restaurant and Bar (where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg used to hang out) near Columbia University (I had just started the Ph.D. program in philosophy there), when four rough-looking characters wandered in. They looked like skinheads, and they sat at the table behind where we were standing at the bar. My nephew had draped his jacket over one of the chairs on which one of these guys was now sitting, and so he tapped the guy on the shoulder to retrieve his jacket. I saw the guy stand up and get in his face, but couldn't hear what was going on. The man then raised his voice and I heard the n-word yelled at my nephew along with a string of curses, after which the man grabbed my nephew's hair with his left hand and drew back his right fist, getting ready to throw a punch.

I hit him first. I had lunged from the side, and my momentum threw both of us to the floor. I didn't know it then, but I was rolling around on the floor of the West End with Edward Sampson.