Kussay Al-Sabunchi was born in Iraq. That was his first mistake. His next mistake was sending flowers.

An Iraqi-born computer engineer legally enters this country, works, pays taxes and follows the rules only to find he’s persona non grata for having sent flowers back in 1997 to a then-estranged wife. He now faces deportation in our new world disorder, where anyone of Arab descent rightly fears getting branded a terrorist.

Kussay “Gus” Al-Sabunchi pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge of sending flowers in violation of a court order in which he should have stayed away from his now ex-wife. Yes, Al-Sabunchi goofed by sending the flowers, but he certainly didn’t harm anyone other than himself. As he points out, he sent flowers – not weapons of mass destruction.

When applying for permanent U.S. residency, the naturalized Canadian citizen, who’s now married to another woman, didn’t note the 1997 arrest. After all, it was a misdemeanor involving a divorce case in which he got custody of a son.

But if you’re looking for some common sense from prosecutors, forget it. The U.S. government wants Al-Sabunchi to be kicked out of the country simply because he didn’t include the 1997 arrest on his application for U.S. residency. The government is treating Al-Sabunchi as if he’s an illegal alien or worse, a terrorist, when he is neither.

And just to make sure it gets its way, the federal government is pursuing Al-Sabunchi in both federal court and immigration court. Orlando federal Judge G. Kendall Sharp calls Al-Sabunchi’s misdemeanor offense “nothing more than a misplaced effort to save a troubled marriage.” On June 2, the conservative judge, who’s not known for being soft on criminals, cleared Al-Sabunchi, noting that the incident was “inconsequential” to any charges of making a false statement. Yet the government won’t let up.

Al-Sabunchi is only the latest case of overzealous prosecution in this post-Sept. 11 environment in which government has whittled away people’s rights in the name of fighting terrorism. We all want to be safer, but how much longer can we allow the government to attack basic First and Fourth Amendment rights and strip our civil liberties away without any oversight from either a judge or a congressional committee?

The Patriot Act was signed into law by President Bush within 45 days of Sept. 11. This was The Law of Unintended Consequences. America had been attacked. Bush sought extraordinary powers, and Congress handed those to him but wisely insisted that there be a sunset on the most controversial assaults on our civil liberties and that there be congressional oversight along the way.

Now Bush is at it again, asking for ever-greater powers. This time, even many Republicans who backed the Patriot Act the first time are questioning the wisdom of handing the executive branch more police authority. After all, Attorney General John Ashcroft has blocked virtually every attempt by Congress to check on the ramifications of the Patriot Act. Just asking for a simple accounting of the number of times that searches have been conducted under the new law brought an Ashcroft power play.

The House sent Bush a message in July when it voted to halt any federal funding for the section of the Patriot Act that allows the government to delay notifying people about so-called sneak-and-peek searches. Librarians are in a huff about the potential for government abuse in searching Web sites used by patrons. And innocent people are at risk of being shipped out of the country on knee-jerk technicalities that have nothing to do with national security and dangerously converge on jingoistic nationalism.

Ashcroft’s doing his mystery tour around America, trying to shore up support for the Patriot Act with a simplistic “trust us,” but many Americans aren’t buying it. How can we when we don’t even know what’s being sold?

It’s all one big government secret.

Myriam Marquez is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.

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