“None of that mattered to the two federal agents who had come calling with new powers provided by the government after 9/11. ‘We have taken a strong position that we are going to use the authority where it exists to go after people who prey on kids,’ said Victor Cerda, acting director of detention and removal for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ‘They are here as a green card holder, and that’s a privilege. You have U.S. citizens and other green card holders who don’t do these things…’ The sales assistant is one of more than 4,000 people arrested over the past 16 months in a nationwide federal child sex offender dragnet dubbed Operation Predator. In New Jersey, 292 people had been arrested as of August, and 71 have been deported. The program has included stings aimed at current offenders, including U.S. citizens. The bulk of the arrests, however, have been foreigners who completed sentences for past offenses but fell through gaps in the system and were never deported… Carried out in near total secrecy, Operation Predator has also sparked debates among federal judges and immigration attorneys who wonder if the government is overreaching. The judges question the government’s use of an administrative rule, crafted to fight terrorism, to detain sex offenders.” —The Jersey Journal (US)

Anti-terror powers being used against sex offenders — this is the kind of thing you probably feared would happen when President Bush was re-elected. You imagine yourself acting out some fetish or kink in the privacy of your own bedroom — and suddenly an FBI SWAT team bashes down the door. “We arrest you in the name of God and common decency!” Ironically, they don’t need to put handcuffs on you because you’re already wearing them…

But relax a little. Take a deep breath. It’s not that bad — not yet, anyway. Take a hard look at the article. It does tell the story of a sad sack guy caught up in the anti-terror net. Seemingly he’s an upstanding citizen who happened to sleep — consensually — with two thirteen-year-olds a few years back. Following this dalliance, he put together a blameless life, and now the feds have decided to deport him for a crime for which the state courts only gave him probation. (Why isn’t that double jeopardy?) What makes matters even worse is that the guy is from Cuba, and Cuba won’t accept deportees from the United States, so he’s caught up in jailhouse limbo.

Setting this guy aside, though, Operation Predator does have the explicit aim of catching child abusers. And even if — as the article points out — some of the foreign-born offenders come from countries where it’s not considered child abuse to sleep with a thirteen-year-old, it’s still illegal here. Whether you agree or disagree doesn’t really matter. That’s the law in America, and if you want to become an American citizen, you have to abide by the law.

Still, though, judicial watchdogs are right to worry about the expansion of anti-terror powers into other domains. Ultimately you don’t want feds or terrorists in your bedroom — unless of course they form some kinky part of your fantasies.

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