We were warned these things would happen. We were warned by members of our highest courts, writers, street-corner pundits. We were warned by the rest of the world, through their actions, reactions and proclamations. We didn’t listen.

Penny McClurg came to the United States from South Africa in 1986 when she was 15 years old. In 1991 she received Permanent Resident status in the United States. She is now the mother of two children, aged 10 and 11, and engaged to a handsome U.S. Navy veteran. She is also prisoner #040062787 in Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami. Her crime? Illegal entry to the United States. In 2003 Penny took a cruise, and left then re-entered the United States within a four-day period. Because of this she was put on Deferred Inspection status, during which her Resident Alien card was supposed to be taken and replaced with a temporary card. This was not done, and she was allowed to exit and re-enter the US again in September 2003 and May 2004.
Come June 2004 Penny received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security requesting her to report to Tampa International Airport Airside F on the 30th of the month. Upon doing this she found no one there to meet her and after waiting several minutes called the number provided in the letter, telling the answering person where she was and why. The assured her someone would come for her. Half an hour later she called again, and was told they had no record of her having an appointment. Eventually a Department of Homeland Security officer arrived and escorted her into the secure area of Airside F and asked her to be seated in an office waiting area.
Another Homeland Security officer, one Mr.Guthier, greeted her and told her he would be with her shortly. Two hours later she was summoned into his office, briefly asked about a 1997 Felony conviction, which she confirmed and stated she had completed her sentence and probation for, and then sent back out to the waiting area. Three hours passed before Mr. Guthier returned. This time he told her she was being officially "detained".
She asked what that meant and was told it was essentially being arrested. She asked where she was going and Mr. Guthier said he did not know, someone else would have to tell her.
Her incarceration began on July 1st 2004. At the time she did not know why she was being held, no one would tell her.
She was taken to Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center and placed in a holding cell that was covered in filth, with feces smeared on the walls. She was then transferred to a regular cell, and again subjected to the same appalling conditions of filth and human waste.
Being Six-Weeks pregnant when placed in the "correctional center" a nurse at the facility wanted to take her blood, but Penny refused to grant her permission for the blood draw due to the unsanitary conditions of the environment.
On the 12th of July Penny asked to see the facility psychiatrist, to discuss her concerns about the way she was being treated, the resulting stress and the effect this would have on her pregnancy. Her request was ignored and on July 15th she miscarried.
She was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital under guard and, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, handcuffs and leg-shackles, was seated in the waiting room. She waited there for three hours, ignored by hospital staff, until she began to visibly hemorrhage. When finally seen the doctor informed her she was miscarrying and performed a D&C was performed without the use of anesthetic.
Although it was required Penny refused a follow-up visit, unwilling to subject herself to the same humiliation and violations again.
As well as endangering her health and well-being the detention center provides insufficient meals, including spoiled, rotten and moldy items, and although the commissary provides packaged foods the prison denies inmates the ability to cook or otherwise prepare these items, which require such measures to be edible.
Beyond the unhealthy and dangerous conditions and treatment she has been subjected to, Penny has been denied receipt of legal materials, having several law books she ordered stopped at the prison mail center and returned to the publisher.
Penny has never been told by prison officials, immigration officials, or any Government official why she is being detained. She had to learn from her lawyers what her supposed crime was.
Penny was never given a chance to arrange for care of her children (both American Citizens) before being detained. It was simply luck that had the children staying with her father, and her fiancé available to care for them.
Penny McClurg is behind held in Immigration Holding, officially denied "entry" into the United States she has called home since she was a child, being denied information and legal resources by her captors (for jailers is an inadequate term for this situation), being denied reasonable and safe medical attention, and being denied the simple hygienic and dietary considerations that are afforded to event he worst criminals in America. Her crime? None. Her supposed crime a mistake by the INS, a brutally clear fuck-up.
This is a story that has slowly spread around a few 'blogs, a few alt-news sites, and remains relatively unheard of. Go to www.news.google.com and search for Penny McClurg - you will find nothing. The major media has not, and more than likely will not, carry this story. Essentially no one will ever know who she is, what has happened to her, or what will finally happen to her.
Penny McClurg is going to join the ranks of the disappeared. A grand tradition that began in South America, with the governments arresting/kidnapping people and literally disappearing them, taking groups and sometimes entire villages of people who spoke out against the government or its ties to exploitive international companies such as United Fruit and making them never heard from again. This has now come home to America, and is a far more random seeming process, lacking the overt political and financial motivations of earlier actions around the globe. Homeland Security will not sleep, they will not rest, they will persecute everyone, for every infraction no matter how small and no matter who's fault, and their victims are not subject to the same rights and privileges of common criminals, and are practically powerless to fight it.

Does this sound wrong to you? Does this sound like a perversion of the America you believe in?
Click HERE to sign the Penny McClurg Petition and to learn more about her case.

The way for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. If you do not click, if you do not sign, you are well within your rights. You can believe that the government is right, that they would detain no one without good reason. You can believe that the President and his advisors, associates and cabinet have America's best interests at heart. You can believe that the Patriot Act is just another weapon against terrorism and that the Dept. of Homeland Security is not hunting and imprisoning every-day Americans.
You will be wrong, and you will be at fault the day they handcuff your children, your neighbors and you, and take you off to a shit-smeared prison, leave you to nearly die from a medical emergency, deny you decent food, legal materials, and the right to know why you are imprisoned.
Don’t tell me it wont happen, couldn’t happen, because it did happen. It happened to Penny McClurg, and its happened to more people. It will keep happening.

America is a dark and haunted place now. We are a shell of myth, with a core of darkness and tyranny that has overwhelmed our golden standards of freedom and justice. We are still the best, we are still the only nation that can even begin to claim to offer true freedom, but we are losing our grasp on that... it is being stolen from us with deceit and deception, a smiling face for freedoms theft, but it is still a theft. What is left behind will be beyond our wildest dreams, beyond our darkest nightmares. If this oncoming tide cannot be reversed, we will look back on these days of a few "disappeared", a few injustices and a mild police state, and we will shed a tear for how good it was.
This is just the beginning.