Last night, ABC debuted the new “Homeland Security” TV series which follows the “men and women” of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agenices such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol and TSA.  The introduction on the website boasts “men and women” three times in the first few sentences in an effort to perhaps highlight there are actually women employees.

In May, the show’s producer, Arnold Shapiro told the Hollywood Reporter, “I love investigative journalism, but that’s not what we’re doing” and further unabasedly admitted the show was meant to portray DHS in a positive light.   “It doesn’t have a political point of view,” Shapiro said. “It’s not meant to show the (department) higher-ups …. just the average men and women on the front lines protecting our country from various things illegal and dangerous,”  as if the mere peon agents and officers were not entitled to have a policital view.

Althought the show does not uncover any terrorist plots, a young Swedish woman is exposed as having the intention to enter the United States without a work visa to find a job as a belly dancer and is sent home.  The series also shows agents drawing guns on a man trying to drive across the U.S.-Mexico border with his family, terrifying his wife and young children, until agents discover it’s a case of mistaken identity.

Although the show does feature agents stopping individuals from entering the United States with drugs, is this propoganda television really the media forum this country needs as we embark on a chance for the United States to change how we are perceived by the world with a new President-elect?

This series airs the same week that a U.S. resident was awarded $240,000 in compensatory damages after being order by Jet Blue to cover up his T-shirt with Aarabic words before boarding the flight.  The young man was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: “We will not be silent.”  He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like “wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090106/ts_alt_afp/ustransportairsecuritymuslimsrights_090106002219

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm and is filed under General Immigration and Nationality Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.