The deep shame of our treatment of illegal immigrants

notice: fair use violation, but too important not to post in full...

from today's nyt...

July 13, 2008

Editorial

The Shame of Postville, Iowa

Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

Court interpreters are normally impartial participants and keep their opinions to themselves. But Dr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, said he was so offended by the cruelty of the prosecutions that he felt compelled to break his silence. “A line was crossed at Postville,” he wrote.

our so-called fairly-elected government has done nothing BUT cross lines for years and the shame of it all just keeps accumulating...

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Obama and Web 2.0 - up until now "American politics had been dominated by rich old cranky white people"

juan cole...

I think it is more significant that Obama is the first major party candidate for president who got where he is through the current iteration of the World Wide Web, which includes the blogging world, distributed information networks, social networking, and video sites such as YouTube (i.e. Web 2.0). That is, the Iowa breakthrough was iconic of Obama's success, because youth, progressivism, metro-racialism and independent politics are all tightly interwoven with Web 2.0.

Ironically, Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992 was the first to use email extensively to shape the news cycle and contact supporters, but Hillary Clinton's people did not seem as good (or maybe as interested) in being on the vanguard of communications technology.

Among the more important capabilities bestowed by the Web 2.0 has been a new model of grassroots fundraising. American politics had been dominated by rich old cranky white people, because they had the money and they voted. They gave us all those Republican administrations and they shaped the Clinton administration as essentially neo-Eisenhowerism. Obama really does have an opportunity to accomplish some new things in American politics, and to avoid slavish adherence to Lobby politics, precisely because he has a different economic base. People younger than 65, and people for whom certain racial categories are not the most important thing in the world, might finally have a voice. In the past, the promise of the youth vote has always faltered when it comes to the November elections. If people in their 20s, 30s and 40s really want change (and with Iraq, the economy, etc., why would they not?) they have to go on organizing, canvassing, giving and above all voting. It is in your hands, O Generation of Web 2.0.

interesting thoughts... no argument here...

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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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More on immigrant detainees - massive raid in Iowa

the ugliness and completely unnecessary tragedy continues...

may 9...

People in Waterloo are trying to figure out what sort of operation federal officials are conducting in town. This week, the Department of Homeland Security took-over and sealed-off the grounds of the National Cattle Congress on the west side of Waterloo.

Thursday night, our crew went to investigate, but security guards told them to stay across the street from the property. Our camera caught pictures of elaborate ventilation systems going into the buildings. There were dozens of cars coming in and out with license plates from surrounding states, and even as far away as Georgia and Texas.

A guard at the gate told us they are preparing for training exercises, but a Homeland Security spokesman would not confirm that. Many people in Waterloo believe the site is being transformed into a detention center. People in the Latino community fear it will be used in a mass immigration raid.

it looks like the suspicions were accurate...

may 12...

Buses have begun arriving at the Cattle Congress grounds in Waterloo after hundreds were detained in an immigration raid on a Postville meatpacking plant today. Officials are not allowing media or others near the entrance. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have declined to say how many buses are being used in the raid on the Agriprocessors Inc. plant. At least 300 people were arrested during the operation, the largest of its kind in Iowa, said Claude Arnold, a special agent with ICE. The raid targeted people who illegally used other people's Social Security numbers and were in the U.S. illegally. According to an affidavit, “Based on information thus far developed in the investigation, it appears, based on 2007 fourth quarter payroll reports, that approximately 76 percent of the 968 employees of Agriprocessors were using false or fraudulent social security numbers in connection with their employment.”

as reported in the previous post, how many more yong sun harvill's will this produce...?

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Conventional Wisdom Man

tom tomorrow...

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For my money, THE definitive word on both Iowa and NH

without question, there is nothing else to be said...

ONE DAY AFTER IOWA:

(D) version: Obama is invincible. His campaign is legendary. He sweeps all those before him aside with his aura of manly inevitability. Hillary is doomed.

(R) version: The Godbillies of Iowa have shamefully nominated some know-nothing. This is a great victory for McCain, whose teenish-percent finish is evidence of his tremendous strength among the rest of the country, which is not nearly as populated with dumb-as-rocks Bible chewers as Iowa is known to be.

ONE DAY AFTER NEW HAMPSHIRE:

(D) version: Hillary is invincible. Her campaign is legendary. She sweeps all those before her aside with her aura of competent inevitability. Obama is doomed.

(R) version: I'm sorry, every pundit within a thousand miles of Washington has just reached orgasm. Please check back for wisdom later.

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Think our corporate media isn't biased? Check this...

yes, it's yet ANOTHER candidate promotion diary on daily kos, this one extolling the virtues of john edwards, but, if you can get past that part, diarist jedreport does a very good job of showing just how thoroughly our corporate media is managing to ignore an anti-corporate, populist candidate... case in point...





well, go-l-l-l-l-lee, looks like our corporate media might not appreciate a presidential candidate who doesn't like 'em, particularly when he comes in second in the iowa caucuses... ya THINK...?

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A sad farewell to Dodd, good riddance to Biden, tough noogies Hil, and hello Huck

and do ya s'pose we're maybe even seeing the end of the bush-clinton dynasty...?

the nyt on biden and dodd...

Two Democrats dropped out Thursday night: Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware.

i was hoping for a better showing for chris dodd last night than he got, but i'm also not surprised... not only does defending the constitution, the rule of law, and calling for accountability barely register on the national media and political radar screen, damn few voters have really tuned in to what's happening to our country... and, sadly, other than dodd's recent heroic battle against telecom immunity, i don't think he made nearly the big stink that is so desperately called for... would that have been different if, for instance, a story like the recent re-categorization of the u.s. as an "endemic surveillance society" had been a national lead story that consumed as much media energy as the killing of a san francisco zoo patron by a tiger...? idle speculation, i admit, but minimally adequate media treatment of our dire straits could have made at least a small difference... maybe the media and our citizens will wake up... maybe bill gates will give me a ten million dollar, no-strings attached grant...

but, as robert parry points out, perhaps the best news to come out of iowa is this...

[T]he Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 dealt a stunning blow to the Bush-Clinton duopoly, with Sen. Barack Obama thrashing Sen. Clinton on the Democratic side and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trouncing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who had the backing of some elements of the Bush Family.

Though the presidential selection process has a long way to go, the inevitability of another election between representatives of the Democratic/Republican establishments was thrown into severe doubt by the victories of Obama and Huckabee.

i'm pleased that edwards did as well as he did and i'm completely noncommittal on barack... huck is a different story, however... he is one scary guy...

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Chris Dodd at the JJ dinner in Iowa

of all the coverage of the various speeches given at the jefferson-jackson dinner in iowa, none mentioned dodd's speech... perhaps i missed it... anyway, here's the youtube clip, thanks to tim at the dodd campaign...

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McClatchy: wrong direction, dump Bush, help the poor

it's ugly out there, as well it should be...

The surveys point to one thing almost all Americans tend to agree on: They're deeply unhappy with the way things are going in the United States and eager to move on. There's virtually no appetite to extend the Bush era, as there was at the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1988 or Bill Clinton's in 2000.

* Just 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.

* Less than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.

* The ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s — dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.

The public mood is evident in Iowa, the heartland state that votes first for major-party presidential nominees and a pivotal swing state in the last two presidential elections.

"People are very unhappy, very unsettled,'' said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.

[...]

"People don't trust anything coming out of Washington,'' she said. "When Bush says we're winning the war in Iraq, I say, 'Oh really?' The weapons of mass destruction weren't there. Why are we still there? We want our people to come home. There are so many things at home that need to be taken care of."

[...]

"It's a sour mood," said David Johnson, a former aide to Kansas Republican Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. His public relations firm, Strategic Vision, conducted the poll for corporate clients.

"There's a feeling that things are not going well. There are concerns about the economy, concerns about Iraq. ... They don't want a third term for Bush, not even Republicans. Among Democrats, I've never seen anything like it. And independents just want to be done with him."

well, people are definitely upset, and that's good... now, if they would just get upset over the most CRITICAL issue, one that trumps all the others, even as critical as they are, and that's the methodical destruction of our constitution, an issue that won't go away with the 2008 election...

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Prisoners working on farms and in call centers. Are immigrant "detainees" next?

ya know, i don't have anything against inmates in correctional institutions being expected to work, but i have major problems with using them to subsidize business... it would seem to me, in my congenitally fevered state, that there would be a huge incentive for business to use MORE inmates in order to reduce the cost of doing business, and for government to incarcerate MORE people to supply the demand...

In a pilot program run by the [Colorado] state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.

Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said.

what i want to know is what "fee" the farmers will be paying...

A group calling for changes in sentencing, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, is also uneasy about the program. The group views the inmates’ pay as problematic.

“This feels like the re-invention of the plantation,” said Christie Donner, the group’s executive director. “You have a captive labor force essentially working for their room and board in order to benefit the employer. This isn’t a job training program. It’s an exploitative program.”

But Ari Zavaras, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, said the merit of a hard day’s work outdoors was invaluable to an inmate.

“They won’t be paid big bucks, but we’re hoping this will help our inmates pick up significant and valuable job skills,” Mr. Zavaras said. “We’re also assisting farmers who, if they don’t get help, are facing an inability to harvest their crops.”

it was back in 2004 that this story appeared...

About a dozen states — Oregon, Arizona, California and Iowa, among others — have call centers in state and federal prisons, underscoring a push to employ inmates in telemarketing jobs that might otherwise go to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines. Arizona prisoners make business calls, as do inmates in Oklahoma. A call center for the DMV is run out of an all-female prison in Oregon. Other companies are keeping manufacturing jobs in the USA. More than 150 inmates in a Virginia federal prison build car parts for Delco Remy International. Previously, some of those jobs were overseas.

At least 2,000 inmates nationwide work in call centers, and that number is rising as companies seek cheap labor without incurring the wrath of politicians and unions. At the same time, prison populations are ballooning, offering U.S. companies another way to slash costs.

i also would like to know what the call centers are paying...

when those being held in immigrant detention centers start being used in this fashion, the full plan will be revealed in all its ugliness...

Two advocacy groups for refugees said on Wednesday that the Bush administration routinely detained immigrant families in prisonlike housing that separated young children from their parents and sometimes provided inadequate medical care, food and educational opportunities, despite calls from Congress to house such families in “nonpenal, homelike environments.”

ah, the united states... ya gotta love it...

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Disguising radical extremists as conservatives

you don't have to read further than the first paragraph to see what i mean... it's been proven time and again that there is a difference, often a gapingly-wide difference, between "conservatives" and (take your pick of the following) evangelical christians/social conservatives...

McCain, Romney Vying for Support Of Conservatives

By Alan Cooperman and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; Page A01

As a former Iowa state Republican chairman, head of Iowa Right to Life and political director of Rep. Jim Nussle's losing gubernatorial campaign, Marlys Popma is an experienced political operative as well as an evangelical Christian.

So when the phone calls started from Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidates eager for her help in the crucial Iowa caucuses next year, she knew this was not an election she could sit out. "You're never going to find the perfect candidate," she said.

cutting to the chase, pompa chose mccain... but, back to the point... scan your eyes over the names that appear in the following paragraphs, and then tell me if you can spot one that hints even remotely of less than extremism, if not of outright looney-tunes...

"Winability is a bigger issue in this campaign because of the Darth Vader-like specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency," according to the Rev. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's policy arm. Evangelicals "want the most socially conservative candidate they can find, who can win," he added.

Romney, who is expected to formally enter the presidential race today in Dearborn, Mich., has been particularly aggressive. In October he held a casual gathering at his Boston home for a who's who of social conservative leaders. Falwell and evangelist Franklin Graham munched on sandwiches and sipped soup alongside former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and pastor Richard Lee of First Redeemer Church in Atlanta.

Romney will also host a private reception for Christian radio and television hosts during the National Religious Broadcasters' annual meeting next week in Orlando, and he is expected to be the commencement speaker at the Rev. Pat Robertson's Regent University in May.

• Jerry Falwell
• Franklin Graham
• Gary Bauer
• Pat Robertson

i can't speak to the two richards, land and lee, but the other four represent some of the most hate-filled, intolerant, dangerous rhetoric that's ever been spewed in this country, and here we have not ONE, but TWO major republican party presidential candidates vying for their favor... disgusting...

i can deal with conservatives, but i have no tolerance for radical extremists, nor do i have any tolerance for major news outlets who would deceive us by characterizing radical extremists as mere conservatives...

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