THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

If that grateful nation is the United States you can probably expect to be treated like a piece of shit if you try to immigrate here after risking your life and family working for us. Consider the treatment of one such family traveling on a special visa created for those who did work for the US and were in danger.

The father had arrived on Thursday with his wife and three children, ages 7, 6 and 8 months, on Special Immigrant Visas, according to the lawyers’ habeas corpus petition filed on Saturday in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. Those visas were created by Congress for citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan who have helped the United States military or government as drivers, interpreters or in other jobs — work that often makes them targets in their home countries.

But instead of being allowed to enter the United States, the family has been detained, according to the court papers.

“I’ve never, ever heard of this happening,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, which filed the petition. “They go through so many layers of security clearance, including one right before they get on the plane.”

Calling the detention “egregious, inhumane and unconstitutional,” the group petitioned the court to release the family, whose names were not publicly revealed. The judge did not order the family be released, but set a hearing in the case for Monday.

According to Ms. Heller, the father was being held Saturday night at a men’s immigration detention facility in Orange County, Calif. His wife and children were taken to a detention center in downtown Los Angeles.

It was unclear exactly how the Afghan man who was detained had helped the United States, but IRAP wrote in the court petition that “his service put not only his own life, but also the lives of his wife and three small children, at risk.”

It is a good thing we are doing so well in Afghanistan that we will no longer need the help of the locals. As news of this kind of shit filters back there we will soon be unable to get anybody to help.