End the madness

The LA Times has a story about a Sri Lankan held by the Bush Administration for 41/2 years as a threat to national security. His crime? He was fleeing torture and abuse at the hands of the Sri Lankan army and was on his way to Canada when he was arrested in the US for forged immigration documents.

He was twice granted political asylum by a U.S. immigration judge, but the Department of Homeland Security branded him a national security threat. He spent nearly 4½ years in a U.S. jail while the government tried to deport him to Sri Lanka.

He was freed March 21 after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called his lengthy detention illegal in a bristling 37-page opinion that took aim at the Bush administration's controversial practice of indefinitely detaining immigrants accused of terrorism but not charged. The three-judge panel said keeping him jailed violated a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against indefinite detention in immigration cases.

The court's unanimous ruling called Nadarajah's jailing illegal and unreasonable and said the government's arguments were "patently absurd," "implausible" and "baffling."

How many more of these poor souls are out there, languishing in American jails? When will the Bush madness end?

That's not soon enough.