John Lennon's Hash Bust Set Off an Immigration Battle for the Ages

In 1971, John Lennon performed publicly, for the first time in five years, at a rally decrying the injustice of Michigan police targeting a radical political activist for an elaborate undercover sting operation, resulting in a sentence of ten years in prison for passing two joints.

The concert brought massive media attention, and John Sinclair soon after walked out of prison a free man, landing John Lennon on Richard Nixon's official enemies list. For the next three years, the President's "plumbers" harassed the former Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono, while the INS threatened him with deportation over an old hashish bust back in England. Meanwhile the FBI tapped his phones and sent agents to tail his every move.

Lennon, Ono, and their legal team fought them every step, and along the way created a new legal precedent in immigration law that still stands as today's DREAM act.

Read John Lennon vs. The USA (written by Lennon's immigration attorney Leon Wildes) for more info.

Long live Nutopia!

PATREON

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