For years, US authorities have been dealing with an unexpected influx of illegal Guyanese immigrants, the sad, disaffected and helpless victims of organized industry who show no sign of stopping its secretive, lucrative operations.
The Customs officer who was going through the man’s suitcase stopped when he saw the strange bundle of grass seed. He immediately asked the newly arrived maintenance worker, from Guyana, to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), in New York, a rather strange question.
But a Brooklyn nursing home worker, the likeable Terrence McLean, turned into an American citizen, denying that he came in from his place of birth, anything more suspicious than carrying carrier carrier carrier bags with the usual two bottles of fine fine. duty. liquor. Inside the bag, but barely noticeable, was a small closed paper sack.
Unlike the Customs return statement and quiet answers, the plastic hair curlers packed in the paper bag hid 13 tired Guyanese curly chestnut seedlings. The special but stressed songbirds somehow managed to stay alive within the narrow net cover tubes to which they were moved, unable to move, and with no food, water or fresh air, for the dark plane ride, away from native shrubs and grasses. supporting flocks that diminish and disappear forever.
One died a short time later, following that dangerous six-hour flight from their warm tropical homeland of South America, in the summer of 2006, The others would have done no better in protective custody, given that the Americans forever worried about external threats. , in this case, viruses and parasites, to their lucrative poultry industry, and valuable bird wildlife.
“Do you carry any birds?” it is almost normal now for US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) guards who keep an eagle eye and ear out for the evacuated passengers coming from the threatened Cheddi Jagan International Airport. Back in 2013, one man was arrested on arrival, when the hidden birds with the much larger brain started singing early, not unlike the proverbial canaries, as he conveniently moved through Customs screening.
A year earlier, Marlon Hariram, nine of the birds were stuffed inside cardboard toilet paper rolls, having broken up his sleeve. This was his fourth arrest for trying to bring fleas to the United States without a proper license and the necessary one-month quarantine. According to papers filed in the Brooklyn Federal Court, seven of the brave birds died, their tiny dry-frozen bodies stored in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife evidence room, while the surviving pair were supposed to be donated to a zoo or nature reserve.
Plans to sell the creatures for more than US $ 5 000 in Queens, where the birds are forced to compete in high-end singing competitions run by militant groups of migrant Guyanese men permanent with all their usual weekend leisure habits, Mr Hariram, then 31, was finally sentenced to six months in prison.
A federal Fish and Wildlife Service agent, when asked why hair curlers were used, said Mr McLean, “the plastic does not trigger the metal detectors, and if you only have a couple of lines, you can donate” the curlers under the clothes. ”
Researchers learned that the local major supplier named had turned the precious birds into an airport worker, who was briefed on what Mr McLean would wear. “Are you Terry?” he questioned the assistant, telling Mr. McLean to follow him to the canteen, where he transferred the bag of hairdressers stuffed with live, wordless lipstick, the New York Times reported. Eventually, he would plead guilty for trying to sneak in the precious fleas.
“He (Mr. McLean) accepted responsibility for what he did wrong, but he is completely innocent of the charge of knowingly breaking Guyanese law,” his defense attorney Diedre von Dornum argued, according to another news report.
Years later, and bird plague, avid finch fanatics and Guyanese greed have resumed with the reopening of our airports in this time of COVID-19. Countless male chestnut seedlings or territorial “towa towas” have been illegally whispered through the airports with the help of various circles of official vultures and lame duck administrations.
Bringing the gall in Trinidad, the once endangered, though not officially endangered, wild species has now disappeared from the island and along the dense Guyana coast, with the rival singing male having been hunted ‘ ruthless across South and Central America for the thriving pet trade, becoming true to its other name, “curio” of expensive, popular birds. Females that are boring boring umber outnumber the courtesy singers in some areas as babies are targeted and breeding pairs are broken up, with the catchers entering the vast interior.
Customs have found miniature seedlings seduced and stuffed in brightly colored hair curlers and plain toilet paper rolls, stuck in soft socks and squeezed in stockings, locked in cylinders plastic and under bag liners, and even taped to suspicious endowed hides. If a bird in the hand was worth at least two in the bush, it is likely that birds in the pants are proving invaluable especially in Queens where they have been sent to our deep pocket immigrants, who are due for competitions illegal but serious Spring songs judged between two male couples in locations like Smoky Hill. In 2012, a 22-year-old Guyanese from Shivashtil Ramrattan and formerly of Corentyne, Berbice was caught trying to leave with a pair of the most stylish “tow towas” hidden in curlers within his crotch. Ramrattan allegedly took the birds back as pets to the US and was fined just $ 100,000.
On Sunday, the CBP released its latest bird bust which has so much embarrassed Guyanese in and out of the country. Officers discovered a further 29 lines inside the drivers of the ubiquitous smuggler during a secondary bag check, after an unidentified 26-year-old man arrived on a flight from Georgetown. CBP agriculture experts consulted the country’s Fish and Wildlife Service inspectors who instructed the agency to capture and quarantine the fleas that turned them over to the US Department of Agriculture Veterinary Services.
The man, who was headed to an address in New Jersey, was not criminally charged; however, CBP assessed a typical US $ 300 civil penalty for undeclared agricultural products, allowed it to withdraw its entry request, and placed it on a bound flight in Guyana last Monday, a statement said.
However, he was not deported, a spokesman noted. He added that the CBP had advised the traveler that he was ineligible for the United States that day and canceled his travel visa. He can re-apply for a new visa, but I, for one, wish he never got another.
In the meantime, we all wait, hopefully in vain, four days later, for as much tweet from our own Customs and Police about the identity of the returned smuggler, why he was not detained after his sudden return , and the associated local accusations, if and when it starts to sing in our evolving tragic story about chestnut seedlings.
As Brooklyn Federal Judge Dora Irizarry told smuggler Marlon Hariram, when she begged her to be allowed to complete a vocational training course, instead of starting her time in prison: “You need to wake up and smell the reality,” he declared Irizarry, “I don’t. don’t know what kind of fairy tale land you live in! ”
ID has seen reports that Guyanese linens are being transferred for huge sums to breeders. As usual, these close-knit underground dealers subscribe to the saying, it’s a sick bird that fouls its own nest.