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36 Chapter Two “What’s the Point of Being a Citizen?” Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again! —John Fogerty, “Lodi” Lodi is a small town in San Joaquin County, California, about thirty-five miles south of Sacramento. Drive down Highway 99 toward Lodi and you will see vineyards, cherry orchards, and walnut farms as far as the eye can see. There are more cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, zinfandel, and sauvignon blanc grapes grown here than in all of Napa and Sonoma counties combined.1 Modern life has brought other sources of employment to Lodi—there is a big Blue Shield HMO calling center, and General Mills runs a breakfast cereal plant. But the canneries and fruit-packing plants that shadow the railroad tracks on the east side of town are still busy reminders of Lodi’s origins. So are street names like Vine and Tokay, and the Lodi Grape Festival, going strong since 1907. The misson-style arch that spans Pine Street was built that year for the first celebration and remains Lodi’s proud symbol.2 It’s an all-American town. In June 2005, sleepy Lodi became nationwide news, but not for its wine. FBI Special Agent Keith Slotter, in charge of the FBI’s Sacramento Field Office, announced: “We believe through our investigation that various individuals connected to al Qaeda have been operating in the Lodi area in various capacities.”3 In particular, Agent Slotter said, those individuals “have received terrorist training abroad, with the specific intent to initiate a terrorist attack in the United States and to harm Americans and our institutions.”4 One man, Hamid Hayat, was convicted of providing material support to terrorists on the basis of his statements during a marathon FBI interrogation and the testimony of an undercover informant. Two imams at the local mosque were deported for immigration violations. But the U.S. Attorney “What’s the Point of Being a Citizen?” ◆ 37 later conceded that there was not, and never had been, an Al-Qaeda cell in Lodi, California.5 The Hayat trial received national attention. It may never be known whether he was a jihadist in the making duly convicted by a jury, or, as he and his family have always maintained, a lazy and foolish young man coerced into a false confession. But while the nation’s attention focused on Hamid’s trial, the FBI’s attention turned to his eighteen-year-old cousin, Jaber Ismail. On April 21, 2006, as Hamid Hayat’s jury entered its seventh day of deliberations, Jaber, his parents, brother and sister—all American citizens— were returning home to Lodi from a family visit to Pakistan. Someone in the FBI, however, ordered that Jaber and his father, Muhammad, not be allowed to fly back to the United States. They were never charged with a crime; no warrant was ever issued for their arrest, nor any public statement made to suggest that they were under investigation for any wrongdoing. In fact, if their exclusion was based on criteria routinely applied to all international travelers, those criteria are what the federal government calls “sensitive security information” and not published. And, whether theirs was a routine case or a special one, the analysts who made the final decision were operating behind a screen of anonymity, in an undisclosed location somewhere in northern Virginia. Jaber and Muhammad were on the No Fly List. Five months, and the hard work of a dedicated lawyer, would be required to reunite them with their family in Lodi. To reunite, that is, not to learn the reasons why they were separated in the first place, or even to receive an apology if, in the language of government, “mistakes were made.” This is the story of how two American citizens fought the U.S. Government to win the right to return home. What would their citizenship have meant if they had lost? The fruit of San Joaquin County drew waves of immigrants from China, the Philippines, and what became Pakistan. Today there are about 2,000 Pakistani residents in Lodi. Many came in a wave of farm laborers that peaked in the 1920s. The modest, well-tended bungalows clustered near the packing sheds and railroad tracks are still home to the descendants of that first wave and subsequent laborers drawn like a magnet to join them. Most trace their roots back to one of two small villages on the eastern banks of the Indus River, just off the Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway. A...

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