The F.B.I. has launched a job opportunities program for immigrants, As with a MacArthur grant, you don’t apply: The honor is thrust Upon you when you least expect it one of the most recent recipients is James Morgan, an undocumented 35-year-old carpenter from County Down in the North of Ireland, who has lived several years in Queens, New York. On May 15, as Morgan strolled to meet friends at neighborhood bar, & stranger began walking by his side, flashing a card identifying himself as F.B.I. Agent Timothy Goss Feld.
According to Morgan, Goss Feld said the F.B.I, had been watching and photographing him for a year, and that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was probably going to deport him. He intimated, however. that if More an was willing to eavesdrop on neighbors and friends for the bureau, a deal might biscotto prevent any abrupt departures, The agent stuck by Morgan as he stood at the bar nervously chatting with other customers and downing beers. Finally the agent left. When Morgan stepped out of the bar minutes later, three L.N.S. agents waiting with handcuffs forced him into a car. Now Morgan is incarcerated without bail at an I.N.S. holding facility.
This kidnap and blackmail style of job recruitment has been going on for some time. Four years ago, another undocumented North Irish worker named Kevin Corrigan was approached in his Bronx, New York, and neighborhood by several F.B.I. Agents who offered to fix his immigration problems if he would hang out at a local Irish bar and report on customers and conversations there Corrigan refused: the next day the Feds came back, handcuffed him and took him for a ride.
The car stopped in midtown Manhattan; one agent got out, and in stepped an officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Irish police force, which Amnesty International this year cited for collusion with loyalist paramilitary death squads. The R.U.C. Officer told the kidnapped man that he knew where Corrigan’s family lived back in Country Tyrone, indicating that bad things might happen to them if Corrigan did not cooperate with the F.B.I.
Corrigan, who was planning to return to Ireland anyway, refused to cooperate and voluntarily left the country. Morgan, however, lives in Queens with an Irish woman and their3-year-olki daughter-both of whom hold green cards and wishes Lo stay here with them. His days revolve around construction sites, domestic life and work as a trainer for the Garlic Athletic Association. Unlike Corrigan, who has never been convicted of a crime anywhere, Morgan spent two years in a Republic of Ireland jail decade ago for possession of explosive detonators. James Cullen, Morgan’s attorney, claims that Morgan was a member of the L.R.A, at the time Were he to return to Ireland, Morgan’s long-past L.R.A. Associations would put him at high risk of assassination by loyalist hit squads. (When he was on the other side of the Au antic, Morgan was hunted by paramilitaries, his parents received death threats and their home was firebombed).
Frank Schulte, the F.B.I man behind the Corrigan recruitment plan, was ultimately reprimanded by superiors for his behavior, they claimed it was “inappropriate for agents to detain Corrigan and compel him to submit for interview.” Perhaps the same woodshedding awaits Morgan’s stalker. But harassment and intimidation of immigrants have been among the bureau’s guiding obsessions since its beginnings in the days of the Palmer Raids.
This leads to all kinds of odd behavior, from fanatical denunciations to Stupefying incompetence, Last year, for example, when a quarter of Irish immigrants allegedly pulled off a $7.4 million Brink’s robbery, the F.B.I, instantly announced, without a shred of evidence, that the heist was done to aid the LRA. Four days later, the bureau recanted, declaring the robbery nonpolitical. Two years ago in Chicago, an F.B.I. stool pigeon taped barroom conversations about Irish politics with a $2,000 Nagra recorder hidden in his jacket, but managed to leave the machine behind on the bar when he exited.
The F.B, I. is not preoccupied just with the Irish: Virtually every immigrant community in the United States, from West Indian to Egyptian to Sikh, has recently reported similar assaults by the Feds. The threats against those who resist include deportation to certain Torture or death, and reprisals against family member back home. And Congress may sharpen the F.B. I teeth: The Senate version of the Omnibus Crime Bill includes provisions for secret deportation hearings for aliens accused of having a connection to terrorism powerful wool for coercing some inactive James Morgan. At this moment, when the United States is experiencing its greatest growth from immigration since the 1920s Congress may engender an explosive growth in the F BA” press-gangs tactics and let the bureau frog-march an even greater number of terrified immigrants into servitude.
Margaret Spillane
(Margaret Spillane writes frequently for The Nation.)
Article extracted from this publication >> August 19, 1994
