In Dallas, Armaan Singh Sarai spent 3 days in juvenile detention after a classmate said his backpack held a bomb
Imagine that your twelve-year-old son doesn’t come home one day after school. You’re always worried about him because he’s not even a teenager but has already required three open heart surgeries thanks to a congenital condition. He’s not a tough kid but a “goofball,” and you’ve recently moved from San Antonio to Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, where everything is bigger, including the trouble. Nobody is telling you where he is. Nobody will answer your questions. He’s just…disappeared.
School officials aren’t helping. Neither are the police. Eventually, you discover that he’s being held in a juvenile detention center. He’s born and raised in Texas. An American citizen. A kid.
Why did the Arlington police hold a twelve-year-old boy with a heart condition for three days without alerting his parents? Why did the school principal call the police in the first place?
Because his name is Armaan Singh Sarai, his working-class Indian family is Sikh, and a “bully” at his school accused him of having a bomb in his backpack.
What the hell is happening again? Arrested and held for three days with no notice to his parents? Now he is awaiting trial? Trial for what, what is he being charged with? This is so outrageous, men.
Honestly, did you even have to specify that it happened in Texas? AGAIN? Let’s review the checklist:
1) Xenophobic panic
2) Religious bigotry
3) Profound ignorance of technology
5) Abusing Constitutional rights of citizens “to keep us safe”
6) Pants-wetting paranoia and “an abundance of caution”