America's North Shore Journal

Liberian warlord George Boley has received some favorable net coverage from some fellow Liberians. He claims he is mystified by his recent immigration arrest.

Analyst

Two days after his arrest by U.S. Federal officials, the former head of the Liberian Peace Council, George Boley has spoken out about the arrest and how he and his family are coping in the aftermath of what he described as a very shocking incident. He was arrested on federal criminal immigration related charges.

Speaking to FrontPageAfrica Thursday by phone from his residence in Clarkson, Rochester, Boley said the arrest took him by surprise and he has no idea why he was arrested.

“I really, honestly don’t know what’s going on. I have no idea. All I know is that on the 11th of July federal agents came here and served an arrest warrant and a search warrant and executed those warrants.

They then took me down to the federal court and notified me of immigration violation going back 18 years and that’s all I can say.

They took me to the immigration court and then the federal court and of course you know I was released without bail and I am just waiting for my hearing on Sept. 5. But honestly I don’t know what’s going on.”

According to a criminal complaint by ICE Special Agent Matthew Meyer, Boley was supposed to turn in his green card in 1988 after he abandoned his lawful resident status in the United States. However, he continued to travel on the green card, the complaint alleges.

Meyer said in court Tuesday that ICE would pursue immigration charges, which could lead to deportation, after the resolution of the criminal case. The newspaper reports that U.S. federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement allege that George S. Boley, 56, is illegally living in Clarkson.

Agents arrested Boley, a married father of seven, at 630 Lawton Road and accused him of fraudulent use of visas and other immigration documents to travel to and from the United States.

LIMAP

At the hearing Tuesday, probation officials detailed Boley’s unremarkable local history: Liberian native, State University College at Brockport graduate, married father of seven, and former City School District administrator who now works at a temporary employment agency.

What went unnoted in court was Boley’s past as an LPC leader. To this day, questions remain in Liberia about whether Boley was a would-be liberator who wanted nothing more than democracy for his homeland or, instead, a warlord who closed his eyes to the brutality of his troops. “He wouldn’t be at the top of my list (of former Liberian leaders) for whom an accounting should be demanded,” John-Peter Pham, the author of Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State, said of Boley by phone Tuesday. “But he wouldn’t be on my amnesty list either.”

Despite its name, the Liberian Peace Council targeted civilians who did not share the party’s politics, according to the international watchdog group Human Rights Watch. In 1994, Human Rights Watch reported that both the LPC and its adversarial political party were “responsible for widespread looting, arbitrary arrests, beatings and extrajudicial executions.”

“There were credible reports that George Boley … authorized the summary execution of seven of his fighters November 14 for harassment of civilians,” stated a 1996 U.S. Department of State report on human rights in Liberia.

On Tuesday, Boley surrendered a passport and was allowed to go home to Clarkson without bail, awaiting his next court date in early September. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bret Puscheck did not ask for Boley to be jailed because of Boley’s ties to the area, but his travel is restricted to western New York.

I’m afraid this case will suggest that ICE enforcement at border entry points is a bit, shall we say, lax. Not that others haven’t said so before, but this guy was presenting documents on a regular basis that ought to have raised questions.