U.S. Denies Entry to Former Terrorist: Some Academics and ACLU Complain

When Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was overthrown by the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1979, he left behind a single central prison, the Carcel Modelo. At the height of his powers of repression, Somoza kept about 600 political prisoners.

Within six years of seizing power in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas had quadrupled the size of the Carcel Modelo and had built an additional twenty-two prisons. They also built approximately twenty secret jails where some of the 8,500 political prisoners under their supervision were executed after having been first skinned alive. Within the Sandinista's prison system, torture was widespread and routinely practiced. Based on these facts, it can easily be argued that the Sandinistas were as bad, if not worse than the repressive Somoza regime they overthrew.

One of the people responsible for the Sandinista's brutal rise to power was Dora Maria Tellez. In 1978 Tellez was one of twenty-five guerillas that snuck into Nicaragua's National Palace dressed as waiters and held 2000 government officials hostage for two days, vividly demonstrating that the Somoza regime was ripe for overthrow. After negotiating safe passage out of Nicaragua, Tellez later returned to the country, and in the final military drive of the Sandinista revolution led a guerilla group that captured Leon, one of Nicaragua's largest cities.

After the revolution, Tellez was appointed minister of health. In this capacity she was an outspoken advocate for gay and lesbian rights and women's rights. She also led the fight against AIDS in her country.

Recently, the U.S. denied a visa to Tellez, who was due to take a teaching position at Harvard in the spring. Tellez was denied entry to the U.S. under provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which prevents those who endorse or espouse terrorist acts from entering the country.

Predictably, many academics and the ACLU were upset by the decision to ban Tellez from the U.S.

"If fighting against tyranny is 'terrorism' how does the United States justify the invasion of Iraq? It is an insult," said Marxist poet and once-Sandinista Gioconda Belli in regards to Tellez's immigration problem. In an equally unimpressive use of leftist-style claptrap, Professor Andres Perez Baltodano, a Nicaraguan sociologist living in Toronto, echoed Belli's comments by saying, "Dora Maria is as much a terrorist as George Washington," conveniently ignoring the fact that Washington never helped lead a group of torturing, murdering Marxist thugs to power.

Now, Sociology Professor Anne Hendershott has published an article in the Washington Times excoriating academia's reaction to both the denied entry of Tellez and that of Tariq Ramadan, who has been linked to terrorism in France and whose grandfather founded the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood.

More than 100 faculty members and administrators from Harvard, Notre Dame, and the University of San Diego have signed a letter demanding that Tellez's name be cleared and her "human rights" be restored. The letter also sharply criticized the actions of the Bush administration.

Hendershott says that when academics with terrorist pasts like Tellez and Ramadan are banned from entering the U.S., it is wrong to say that they've been denied entry simply because of their political ideas and beliefs, thus:

"It is not their ideas that are preventing the entry of these scholars; it is their activities. As David Horowitz points out in his book, "Unholy Alliance," an under-appreciated fact about the war on terror is that America had become a base of terrorist operations because the liberties provided by the American legal system have allowed terrorists to travel freely, raise money, propagandize, recruit and move men, women and money across international borders. The administration is addressing this through the Patriot Act. But colleges and universities have yet to learn."