The York Dispatch · 25 August 2003

CP-2003-013

Thumbs down

Transcribed from the clipping

“Thumbs down: To the Bureau of Immigration Control and Enforcement (formerly the INS) for deporting Munir Lami with no notice to his family members. The 54-year-old Palestinian, who is blind and suffers from diabetes, was a detainee at the York County Prison. But recently he called his family and said he’d been asked to sign release papers and was a free man. Before his family could come from Philadelphia to pick him up, he’d been placed on a deportation plane to the Middle East. They argue that it’s not fair to ask a blind man to sign legal papers without his lawyer present. Granted, Lami was slated for deportation because he’d broken the law and had served time for ‘conspiracy’ pertaining to ‘welfare checks and food stamps,’ according to family members. But that doesn’t justify dumping a blind, diabetic, stateless Palestinian someplace where he has no support — at least not without first notifying his family.”

Context added by this archive

Six sentences on an editorial page in Pennsylvania. A blind man is asked to sign his own release without a lawyer and put on a plane before his family can drive from Philadelphia. The paper cannot name where he was sent, because he has no country to be sent to.

Cite this item

"Thumbs down," The York Dispatch, 25 August 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-013. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-013

Elsewhere in the archive

• Israel rejects calls for a truceThe York Dispatch · 31 December 2008 · the same newspaper
• Unfortunately, It Was ParadiseSan Francisco Chronicle · 19 January 2003 · the same year
• Israeli forces kill two PalestiniansThe Charlotte Observer · 30 January 2003 · the same year
• Some Israelis contemplate low-grade ‘genocide’ for PalestiniansThe Free Lance-Star · 2 February 2003 · the same year