Miguel Tinker-Salas: Pomona professor and academic leaders object to way he was questioned by federal agents
Miguel Tinker-Salas, a professor of Latin American history at Pomona College, had two unexpected guests during his office hours on Tuesday.
Mixed in with the line of about five students were two detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, one of whom, according to a business card he gave Tinker-Salas, works for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a Federal Bureau of Investigation collaboration with local detectives. According to Tinker-Salas, the detectives said they wanted to “develop a profile of the Venezuelan community in the United States.”
Tinker-Salas, who provided business cards and cell phone numbers for the detectives that the two left during their visit, described the 20-minute encounter as pervaded by “verbal jostling.” Tinker-Salas said that one of the men had a folder, in which he had Tinker-Salas’s profile from the Pomona Web site, among other papers. Tinker-Salas specializes in contemporary Venezuelan and Mexican politics, as well as issues related to oil in Venezuela. “They praised my academic credentials,” Tinker-Salas said. “Why are you really here?” he said he asked the visitors. “What is your level of education to have an opinion on my credentials?”
The detectives then asked questions for which answers are publicly available, Tinker-Salas said. “They asked if there’s a Venezuelan consulate in L.A. and if I have relations to it. They asked things like, how many Venezuelans are there in L.A. and in the U.S.,” Tinker-Salas said. “There is no Venezuelan consulate in L.A. I interpreted this as a fishing expedition.”
Tinker-Salas has been an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Venezuela, most recently about the “inoculation strategy” that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said is an attempt to form “a united front against some of the kinds of things that Venezuela gets involved in.” The professor said he guessed that his prominence, particularly in the news media, drew the detectives to his door....
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Mixed in with the line of about five students were two detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, one of whom, according to a business card he gave Tinker-Salas, works for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a Federal Bureau of Investigation collaboration with local detectives. According to Tinker-Salas, the detectives said they wanted to “develop a profile of the Venezuelan community in the United States.”
Tinker-Salas, who provided business cards and cell phone numbers for the detectives that the two left during their visit, described the 20-minute encounter as pervaded by “verbal jostling.” Tinker-Salas said that one of the men had a folder, in which he had Tinker-Salas’s profile from the Pomona Web site, among other papers. Tinker-Salas specializes in contemporary Venezuelan and Mexican politics, as well as issues related to oil in Venezuela. “They praised my academic credentials,” Tinker-Salas said. “Why are you really here?” he said he asked the visitors. “What is your level of education to have an opinion on my credentials?”
The detectives then asked questions for which answers are publicly available, Tinker-Salas said. “They asked if there’s a Venezuelan consulate in L.A. and if I have relations to it. They asked things like, how many Venezuelans are there in L.A. and in the U.S.,” Tinker-Salas said. “There is no Venezuelan consulate in L.A. I interpreted this as a fishing expedition.”
Tinker-Salas has been an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Venezuela, most recently about the “inoculation strategy” that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said is an attempt to form “a united front against some of the kinds of things that Venezuela gets involved in.” The professor said he guessed that his prominence, particularly in the news media, drew the detectives to his door....