Rarely do international detention issues hit home

Prison blues
Originally uploaded by funkindrum

The New York Times has an article today on an acquaintance of mine who got in a bad situation. I've met this Italian lawyer—my parents live across the street from his girlfriend. His English is not very good, but he did goof around with my kids and played tennis with my dad often last summer.

From my brief encounters with him, I thought he was such a sweet guy. How awful for him that he was jailed for 10 days; the NYT reports that:

"On April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum."

I am glad that he was released and on his way home. We all hope that he'll be back for more visits.

Later in the article, it's funny that they mention that Domenico was a "summer attraction" in my parents' neighborhood... he's quite, ahm, easy on the eyes. Few Americans can get away with just wearing a snug bathing suit all summer.