Powers, the deputy warden, said. Yacine stood and slid his hands through the portal of his cell door. Cold steel tightened around his wrists and snapped. “Step back, please,” Farrell, the youngest guard, said. Keys jangled, metal clicked against metal and Yacine’s heavy cell door opened. He cooperated as a waist chain and leg irons were applied. Taking stock of the men, he knew Powers, Farrell and the other prison guards, but not the four strangers. One of them passed him a pen and held a clipboard, thick with forms before him. “Your signature is required by the Xs on each record,” the stranger flipped crisp pages of official documents for Yacine to see. Letterheads flashed by; the U.S. Attorney General, the U.S State Department, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, U.S. Homeland Security, Correctional Service Canada, the U.S. Justice Department and several other agencies. It was awkward for him to sign, his cuffs and chains knocked against the clipboard.
