Italian man held in US jail for 10 days for no good reason
An Italian man was held in a Virginia jail for 10 days after arriving in the US to visit his girlfriend.
But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.
Of course, he denies making any claim of the sort:
Twelve hours later, when Mr. Salerno was granted a five-minute phone call, he called Ms. Cooper and denied saying anything of the kind. Instead, he said, the asylum story seemed to be retaliation for his insisting on speaking to his embassy.
He has now been released, thanks to investigation by the Times. Too bad not everyone has a reporter looking out for them.