[Photo: Mr. Castro, the suspect in suspected nuclear-bomb plot that was thwarted by vigilant U.S. Border Patrol agents]The former governor of Arizona, 96-year-old Raul Castro, of Nogales, Ariz., was waylaid recently by intrepid agents of the U.S. Border Patrol in southern Arizona, where they don't have as much to do these days because fewer Mexicans are risking death illegally trudging 100 miles through the brutal heat of the Sonoran Desert.
A radiation detector, it seems, signaled some radiation on the elderly gentleman's person during one of those pesky stops by the Border Patrol agents who are all over the region.
Governor Castro, it seems, was emitting traces of radiation from a medical procedure. So he was detained and humiliated in the 100-degree heat because he could have posed a "nuclear threat" to the Homeland.
This occurred a good ways from the border itself on Interstate 19 north of Tubac, Ariz. (Border Patrol claims to have martial-law authority in a zone within 100 miles of the border, which includes the city of Tucson.)
You think I'm kidding? Read this.
Mr. Castro was elected in 1974 as the first (and only) Mexican-American governor of Arizona. He is also a former U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Bolivia and El Salvador.
This appalling incident has been well-known in the area since it occurred three weeks ago, and I've been amazed that the national media ignored it for so long, till it got picked up out of a local Nogales publication. (The Phoenix and Tuscon media are too lazy and too craven to rouse themselves much and report this out. They're afraid some right-wing screwball might write them a stern letter of complaint, after all.)
Finally, Salon has got on the case. Here.
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