A powerful Los Angeles politico found himself detained by federal authorities as he returned to the U.S. from a trip abroad, the Westside Current reports.
Rick Taylor, a former chief of staff to longtime local leader Zev Yaroslavsky whose company bio touts him as leader of “scores of successful campaigns” who “has helped to elect numerous candidates to public office at the local, state and national levels,” was returning from Turks and Caicos on June 20, he told the Current.
While his wife and daughter made it through customs with ease, he was asked by an agent if he was from California. When he answered in the affirmative, he was pulled aside and put into a room that “was 90 percent Latino, Spanish-speaking folks,” he said.
“Most looked like couples. Everyone seemed nervous,” he added. “And you don’t know why you’re there. No one tells you a thing.”
After an hour or so, he was released, but no explanation was given for the detention. At one point, he remembered he had an Obama-Biden shirt in his bag.
“I actually started to panic,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, is this going to cause me trouble in this country right now?’”
Taylor noted his wife, who was born in Vietnam, wasn’t detained, something they’d feared before their trip. Instead, he fears it’s his political leanings that put him at risk.
Federal officials told the Current that people are given additional screenings for “a variety of reasons.”
“If it can happen to someone like me—white, older, plugged in—imagine what this must feel like to people who don’t have English, who don’t know their rights,” he said. “What’s the impact on them and their families?”
