I wasn't surprised, really, having just spent six months working and travelling in the Islamic world - Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan. If ever there was a security red-flag candidate, I was it, and I assumed this was just protocol.
Four of those months were in Pakistan, and I had just spent a week with a journalist friend going to different madrassas, including one Islamic school visited by one of the bombers in last July's attacks in London. Possibly I caught their attention by poking around the Karachi Marriott parking lot, across from the US consulate, where a suicide bomber's attack had killed a US diplomat just two months before.
How about the hundreds of phone calls I made from Pakistan to friends and family back home that inevitably mentioned the Taliban's resurgence and criticised the US President, George Bush? Was I wiretapped? Certainly Homeland Security, whose stated mission is to "lead the unified national effort to secure America … prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation", had detained me for such a reason.
Or maybe officers had questions about the Jamaat-ud-Dawa rally I'd witnessed in Kashmir. The group was protesting against the US because it recently had been added to the State Department's list of groups designated as terrorist organisations. Then there was Lebanon, where I'd travelled deep into the Hezbollah-held south.
If only. No, these frontline warriors in the global war on terrorism at Homeland Security had far more pressing issues to question me about.
"Why did you infringe on the Boston Celtics' copyright in Boston in 2003?" asked my case officer, Malik, from behind his high desk. "Uh, because I used to sell T-shirts outside sporting events," I said, wondering what this had to do with national
security.
"You've got a long record," he said. Sure, for peddling "Yankees Suck" T-shirts - sans permit, which isn't a crime but a code violation - not for promoting Bin Laden Rulz DVDs or the Idiot's Guide to Suicide Bombing.
"You know, we could have you sent up to Boston for the unresolved T-shirt infractions," Malik said. "But what we're holding you for is an NYPD bench warrant from 2004. You were in a fight with a parking attendant, found not guilty and then missed a court date."
All true. But how and why does Homeland Security share the New York Police Department's jurisdiction in cases unrelated to counter-terrorism? A fight over a parking space hardly counts as terrorism.
"We're calling NYPD to come to pick you up," Malik said, without asking a single question about Pakistan, terrorism, Islam or madrassas.
So I sat and waited. Four department officers working two cases - a Senegalese guy who was caught with $100,000 in a suitcase and mine - couldn't even get the New York Police Department on the phone. A debate then broke out among Malik, his co-worker and their boss about how to call the police. Six hours later, the department still hadn't received word from the police department. A shift change was coming up and officers aren't allowed to leave until finishing all their cases.
Instead of protecting the homeland from such a dangerous T-shirt-selling, off-road-rager like me, Malik set me free, so he could get home in time to watch the game.
As he finished my paperwork, Malik asked, "So, ah, M. LeMoine, why did you miss that court date, anyway?"
"I was in Iraq."
"Doing what? Like a contractor, soldier?"
"No. I had volunteered to run a humanitarian program for the Coalition Provisional Authority but left when they started killing Westerners."
"Damn terrorists. Take care of that warrant. And welcome home."
Welcome home, indeed.
(America's Homeland Security, the $US40-billion-a-year agency set up to combat terrorism after the September 11 attacks, has been given universal jurisdiction and can hold anyone on Earth for crimes unrelated to national security.)
Ray LeMoine is co-author, with Jeff Neumann and Donovan Webster, of Babylon by Bus, an account of LeMoine and Neumann's experiences working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.