Round 'em up, lock 'em up - now we're not sending illegal immigrants back home, we're sending them directly to prison

Yippee-ti-yi-yo
Get along little dogies
It’s your misfortune and none of my own
Yippee-ti-yi-yo
Get along little dogies
You know that Wyoming the federal prison
will be your new home

well, 's-CUSE ME...! forget about those halliburton detention centers (see previous post)... now it's straight to federal prison for all you poor bastards just trying to earn a living wage...

In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.

empathy...? compassion...? fuhgeddaboudit...

Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for northern Iowa, who oversaw the prosecutions, called the operation an “astonishing success.”

Claude Arnold, a special agent in charge of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said it showed that federal officials were “committed to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws in the workplace to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.”

The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. Twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.

The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.

The pleas were part of a deal worked out with prosecutors to avoid even more serious charges. Most immigrants agreed to immediate deportation after they serve five months in prison.

The hearings took place on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, in mobile trailers and in a dance hall modified with black curtains, beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing several nights until 10. On Wednesday alone, 94 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced, the most sentences in a single day in this northern Iowa district, according to Robert L. Phelps, the clerk of court.

Mr. Arnold, the immigration agent, said the criticism of the proceedings was “the usual spate of false allegations and baseless rumors.”

The large number of criminal cases was remarkable because immigration violations generally fall under civil statutes. Until now, relatively few immigrants caught in raids have been charged with federal crimes like identity theft or document fraud.

“To my knowledge, the magnitude of these indictments is completely unprecedented,” said Juliet Stumpf, an immigration law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who was formerly a senior civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. “It’s the reliance on criminal process here as part of an immigration enforcement action that takes this out of the ordinary, a startling intensification of the criminalization of immigration law.”

the government line: "an astonishing success"... the government response to the weaselly, unpatriotic, bleeding hearts who have the gall to be concerned about how real, honest-to-god human beings are being treated: "the usual spate of false allegations and baseless rumors"...

and what about the EMPLOYERS who hired these poor stiffs and have been making money hand over fist on their backs...?

< crickets >

what a great time to be alive in the u.s. of a...

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Yet another reason why the team at the White House needs to be immediately replaced

they've made it abundantly clear they will do what they want, when they want, and how they want, constitution and the bill of rights be damned...

Quietly implemented in December, the special "Communications Management Unit" (CMU) at [Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana] targeting Muslim and Middle-Eastern inmates was not implemented through the process required by federal law, which stipulates the public be notified of any new changes to prison programs and be given opportunity to voice objection. Instead, the program appears to have been ordered and implemented by a senior official at the Department of Justice.

note the timing, little more than a month after the november elections...

[T]he CMU program, instituted Dec. 11, 2006 -- shortly after the mid-term elections in which Democrats won both chambers of Congress -- is being implemented at Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.

it looks like a hoosier-state guantánamo, and i'm sure that must be precisely what's intended...

Under the CMU program, telephone communications must be conducted using monitored phone lines, be live-monitored by staff, are subject to recording and must be in English only. All letters must be reviewed by staff prior to delivery or sending, and visits may be non-contact only, live-monitored, and subject to recording, in English.

so, what's "different...?" read on...

[Attorney Peter Goldberger, a Philadelphia-area specialist in criminal appeals and former law professor who has 30 years experience dealing with federal prisons and inmates] notes that "What's different" about the program, "is limitation of contact with friends, family and outsiders -- instead of 300 minutes of telephone time per month, it's one 15 minute call per week, which can be reduced in the Warden's discretion to a mere three minutes once a month."

"Instead of all-day visiting every week or every other week, it's only two hours at a time, twice a month, with no physical contact, presumably sitting on opposite sides of a plexiglas window," Goldberger continued.

"And all letters, except to lawyers, courts, and Congress, will be read and copied, with weeks of delay, instead of cursorily inspected and sent right on," he adds. "It's a totally new and different program."

and why should this be a concern...?

Director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C. Kate Martin told RAW STORY that restrictions of inmate communications must be narrowly tailored to serve a specific identifiable need of the government. Martin said that there was a clear rationale for restricting communications of those who had previously handled classified information -- for example a former CIA agent who had passed secrets to a foreign government. But with individuals who never possessed classified information, she said, that rationale doesn't exist.

oh, and never mind the fact that it's very likely both illegal and unconstitutional...

[Executive Director of Federal Defense Associates Howard Kieffer, a legal group based in California] believes that the program not only violates federal law but the Constitution as well, saying it abridges their right to freedom of expression and association.

These inmates are "not able to communicate like other inmates," he said.

James Landrith, Jr., who heads "The Multiracial Activist," an on-line journal that covers social and civil liberties issues relating multi-racialism, says the new program set a "very, very bad precedent."

and, par for bushco, it was all done under the table...

It's "interesting that this administration is trying to push these things through covertly" -- things he said he views as unconstitutional restrictions -- "while you have a sitting Vice President who could be charged in the short-term future with having been involved in outing a CIA agent."

He added that the program "makes it very very hard for someone to mount a real defense or appeal when they can't talk to anyone on the outside."

if it wasn't for the serious investigative journalism being conducted by sites such as raw story, this wouldn't be coming to light at all... the part that i find most chilling is how much more DON'T we know...? it has to be one hell of a lot...

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