To the Editor:

The story of Boubacar Bah from Guinea, who had overstayed his tourist visa, is grim, and a national embarrassment. To my naïve eye, it appears that we have evolved from the days of Jim Crow to accepting another politically acceptable object of disdain and mistreatment: immigrants and other noncitizens.

Immigrants are held in prisons without recourse; prisoners are held in Guantánamo without recourse. How can this happen?