From the Bureaucracy Files

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is shipping out a dad who has custodial rights to his American kid, who also takes care of her half-sister. Nine years ago his now ex-wife — mother of both — wrote a note saying she didn't like him any more and the "wheels of justice" began slowly to build their momentum.

Now, Stefan Lang, a pillar in his daughters' lives and in the community is on the cusp of being shipped away from them and back to his native Germany. Apparently, when a mother says something bad about a dad, it can't be taken back even if she says she wants to.

Really, it's not like he was the most ruthless concentration camp commandant ever and left his kids — or daughter Monika Hertwig who was such a daughter and is the subject of a documentary — trying to cry their way out of his shadow for their whole life. And his kids reflect well on him, not like Doors front man Jim Morrison, whose straight-arrow, accomplished father George S. has just passed with the lifelong belief that (according to the NY Times obit, quoting a band bio), "I had the feeling that he felt we’d just as soon not be associated with his career. He knew I didn’t think rock music was the best goal for him. Maybe he was trying to protect us."

Lang is just a man. Just a dad. Just a guy threatened by indifferent bureaucracy with losing his family.