The man in the photo on the right above is Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal, an Afghan who fought on the side of the Afghan government and U.S. forces against the Taliban, and who has lived in the United States with his family since 2021, according to news reports. Like thousands of other Afghans who sided against the Taliban, he has sought asylum in the United States because his life would be in danger if he stayed in his native country.
On Friday he was getting ready to drive his children to school when he was surrounded by agents in unmarked vehicles and arrested in front of his children. The following day, he died in Parkland Hospital after he was taken there because he was not feeling well. No cause of death has been reported so far. He was the 12th death in ICE custody so far this year, and the 24th this fiscal year. If that pace keeps up, it will set a record for deaths in ICE detention.
The photo on the left is of the flag that long-time Croton resident Lenny Amicola has flown on his property for quite a while now. The flag was preceded by other flags, some with more crude messages, critical of Democrats. As most reading this will know, last year village officials were unsuccessful in getting Lenny to take his flag down, and were forced to drop an enforcement action against him.
Lenny and his supporters presented this as a free speech, First Amendment fight, and they were almost certainly constitutionally correct in their position. The Chronicle, more than any other media outlet by far, provided a voice for Lenny and his supporters, publishing nearly 20 articles about the case, including investigative reporting that suggested strongly the village was unlawfully singling out Lenny’s flag because of its political message.
(We even published a Guest Editorial by Lenny himself explaining why he would not take his flag down.)
That reporting undercut assertions by the village and some residents that the attempted action against Lenny’s Trump flag was just a routine code enforcement matter, no different than that taken against other flags and banners. Lenny’s attorney, and another local legal analyst who wrote about the Constitutional issues for the Chronicle, were able to educate the community in First Amendment law. Those legal precedents dictate that political speech cannot be regulated as strictly as commercial speech, which all of the other code enforcement actions consisted of.
For the time being, Lenny has won his free speech battle. While his attorney has threatened to sue the village if it does not guarantee it will not go after Lenny again (this is the second time Croton has tried to get Lenny to take his flags down), she has not yet done so, and there is no sign at present that village officials are eager to go down this path again.
So the First Amendment, which forbids the government from restricting speech except for very special circumstances, has been upheld. But there are many in the village who do not like Lenny’s flag, and they have free speech too. For example, they can ask, what exactly is being expressed here? What is Lenny saying with his flag? The question, of course, assumes that Lenny himself knows what he is saying, or what Trump stands for, or what Trump is doing every day.
We have talked to Lenny a number of times and he seems like a nice man in person. He does not seem like the kind of person who would want to see others suffer. So it seems legitimate to ask him what his sources of knowledge are and how much he knows about the daily policies of the Trump administration.
Most people assume that Lenny is not just stating the simple fact that Donald J. Trump is president of the United States, thus making him not only Lenny’s president but all of ours, like it or not. That goes without saying, and so most villagers figure that Lenny is saying more than that.
Last December, right after Rob Reiner and his wife were killed and Donald Trump issued a Truth Social post saying that it was because he had Trump Derangement Syndrome—a statement widely regarded as incredibly narcissistic, insensitive, and yes, itself deranged—we urged Lenny in an editorial to exercise his free speech right to take his Trump flag down. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he did not do so.
One reader took us to task for this editorial, saying that Lenny was ill and that we were in effect picking on a sick old man. It is true that Lenny has had health problems related to his military service. He is a disabled veteran, for which he deserves respect and sympathy from all of us. Thus we were very pleased when, last month, the EverythingCroton blog posted photos of Lenny using his snow blower to clear the sidewalk in front of his property on Grand Street. (The photos were taken by Paul Steinberg, the legal analyst who had written several Guest Editorials for the Chronicle defending free speech in the village.)
We never considered Lenny to be some kind of victim in the free speech fight. He fought hard for his position, appeared in media interviews, attended political events, and took an active role in his own defense. He also talked to the Chronicle on more than one occasion about his case, sitting down with us for coffee and expressing gratitude that we had featured his fight so prominently. Thus we are disappointed that Lenny has not responded to more recent requests to talk about what the flag means to him, and the basis for his loyalty to the president.
He doesn’t have to tell us anything, of course, but we have the right to ask.
To go back to Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal, who has left a wife and six children behind (one of whom is reportedly a U.S. citizen.) There is still a lot we don’t know about the man and his situation, although by all indications he had entered the country legally along with his family and his asylum application was being processed. Perhaps it will turn out that he was a dangerous criminal terrorist and so we need not care about his death or his family.
No matter. In the Chronicle’s files, we have collected many dozens of examples of immigrants who have committed no crimes but nevertheless have died in custody, have been detained without good reason, and/or are still detained even though judges have ordered their release. There are also many cases of American citizens who were locked up for months because federal authorities refused to accept their documents as proof that they belonged here. Other media have done the same record keeping, and reported on these cases.
We are also keeping files on many, many other brutal and cruel things the Trump administration has done not just to immigrants but to U.S. citizens, to our institutions, to the very fabric of our society. In the coming weeks, we will continue this series, “Who will be the last MAGA standing in Croton?” and discuss the details of these other examples of the great damage Trump and his government have done.
We know that many in Croton already know a great deal about this. But others may not.
Despite what some might maintain, these are not matters of opinion. The days when journalists acted only as stenographers of what government officials said, engaging in a “he said, she said” style of reporting that pretended there were no real facts or evidence to be obtained on the matter at hand, are long over. All opinions are not equal, especially ones that are not backed up by solid support and cannot withstand the heat and light of active investigation. There is a popular saying about that, but we think most readers are familiar with it.
Ironically, the Trump administration seems to realize this as much as anyone. That is why it has done as much as it can to suppress freedom of speech and the press ever since Trump returned to office. Just this past weekend, for example, Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of media outlets whose coverage of the Iran war did not please the administration. That is just the latest example of a long list of attempts to squash freedom of expression, and we will explore those other cases in subsequent installments of this series.
Unfortunately, some of the same outspoken voices in Croton who have defended Lenny’s free speech have applauded the Trump administration’s attempts to suppress the speech of others, or at least not voiced any objection to them. We hope that will soon change.
We are posing the question “Who will be the last MAGA standing in Croton?” not to be rhetorical or funny, but literally. As a media outlet practicing journalism, the Chronicle’s job is to keep the community it serves well informed. As time goes on, the objective evidence for the brutal, cruel, bigoted, and racist nature of this government grows daily. As eyes are opened and reality bites with ever more powerful teeth, Trump’s support is plummeting rapidly.
His dragging the country into a highly unpopular, unnecessary, and deadly war against Iran—in which our own brave young soldiers are being sacrificed for the vanity of one man, not to mention hundreds of civilians, including so many children—may be the last straw for those Americans who were suckered by his false rhetoric and his empty promises.
Of course, we don’t expect all, or even the majority, of Trump supporters to turn against him just because of the death and devastation he is leaving behind. Perhaps a bump in gas prices, if it lasts long enough, will be sufficient to lead some MAGAs to find other leaders or other causes. Nor do we expect Trump supporters to run into the arms of the Democratic Party, whose own serious flaws and failures provide major explanations for how we got where we are today.
Our job here is to provide information and help combat ignorance, whether it be innocent (if that is possible) or willful, which is much more often the case.
To be continued.
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