I received the following letter this morning from our long time DJ friend Gilles Le Guen.
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hello friends,
Just to let you know that i got kicked out of the country. That is USA. Deported! It happened last saturday, the 5th. I was coming back to NYC for a month with a connecting flight in Philadelpia. I went through immigration fine and for some reason i got picked in between 300 people by the customs. They went through my stuff -i was not carrying records for the first time!?!!- but they found stuff they didn’t like…. NYC’s business card, stuff related to music and deejaying.
I got invited in a small room by an immigration officer who told me he checked every system and knew “everything” about my life. And i’d better “tell the truth”. Indeed. He knew every day i came to the US and every day i left. So i did tell the truth. Didn’t try to escape. At the question “why did you overstayed you visa for 1500 days in 2001-2-3-4-5”, i just answered : “i enjoyed it here”.
The whole thing started at 4pm. By 9 i was lying in a jail in the Montgomery County, an hour drive from Philly airport at night. They call it “correctional facility”; but it’s a jail!!!! There is barbed wire everywhere, you arrive handcuffed in the back of a police car with barrs and you wear a damn uniform. Lying on a bunk bed, i had 16 hours to think about you all. Some of you i will never see again. Oh yes! I’m not welcome in your country for the next 10 years now. I had enough time to look at the great 10 years (almost) i spent in New York. I though about that first afternoon in the city in 1998. I though about the heat in the summer, the cold in the winter, crazy bicycle rides, your beautiful minds, great beer, cheap rents, bridges, buildings, sun going down in Jersey, why i picked the wrong line with the wrong customs person in Philly, my first time in the Park. I though about the first time i played music “from february 1978 to september 1983” in a cool back room of a bar in Brooklyn and the people sitting there that day. etc etc
Thinking but not too loud : i had two “roomates” -some local criminals, no big deal- trying to sleep. By that time privacy was the keyword with the bathroom sitting in the middle of the cell!!!! I experienced the no lace-shoe thing escorted by the police in the middle of the aiport, handcuffed of course. And the naked body search, the funky jumping suit of the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, the badge with your “inmate identification”. I kept the bracelet they also put around your wrist. As a matter of fact i’m wearing it right now! So nice and cool!!!! There is my mugshot on it!!!!!
Then, when everything was over, i waited for two hours and a half more in some other cell at the airport ; and sunday night they put me on flight to Paris. They made sure i was not going ballistic in the aircraft and waited the last second the door was closed to leave.
Now i’m sitting in a Mac Donald in Paris -...!!?! they have free wi-fi…......- and France just elected yesterday some crazy dangerous Republican -which i knew about from my immigration buddies in Philly- who talks about God when he feels like. Been there before, right? My world is upside down.
Love you all. Gilles Le Guen
PS.sorry, it’s bit dramatic but i don’t like forced confinment.
PSbis.it’s too bad. everything was going well until this : my compilation with the Nouvelle Vague people is coming out; launching parties are planned in Paris, Berlin, London and the States; and i was booked for an Agnes B event at NYC’s PS1 for the Warm Up on 14th of july. The US gigs won’t happen!!!! for me…...