Our first constituent was
identified as coming back on a United Arab Emirates flight back from
Iraq and was scheduled to land the next morning: a girl who had
graduated from the University of Central Florida and lived a very
productive life as a legal resident in central Florida for the last 6
years after her graduation. So we went the next day--early the next morning because, if anything,
my legislative experience in the State legislature has told me: go to
where the action is, go to where the controversy is, and do what you
can to help. First, we went to Customs and Border Protection, and we got no
response. We actually got surprise responses of what were we even doing
there, because this was not a matter they were prepared to handle. So we went to the airport and were greeted by Greater Orlando
Aviation Authority officials who were very helpful and understood that
these were central Floridians who had been flying for 20 hours and were
just about to arrive back into Florida, where they lived. That morning, I also met a young man who was a citizen from an area
just north of the district, who was waiting for his two parents to come
in on the same Emirates flight. We found out that the constituent and
the two parents were three people who were held back and questioned. Throughout the day, we would get updates, but what we found out is
there was very little information because there was very little
understanding by Customs and Border Protection about how to implement
this very vague order. The court had just ruled that it was potentially
unconstitutional. So working with our local officials after hours of building up, hours
of waiting with the families, hours of press starting to arrive, hours
of TV coverage, and hours of protest, right when we were in the middle
of doing interviews, that is when the families were finally released,
after 7 hours of being questioned without water, without food, after a
20-hour flight.
Keywords matched
Border Protection