Fifteen years of an exemplary life in the U.S. only to get thrown into a detention center and left to die

this is so wrong...

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

detention watch network has put together this handy map...

Detention Map

Welcome to the world of immigration detention, where over 27,500 immigrants are detained on any given day across the country in a hodgepodge of federal detention facilities, county jails, and private for-profit prisons.

Are there immigrants detained near you?
Click on a state to zoom in; touch a dot and get more info.

The map includes contact information for:

• Facilities known to detain immigrants in removal proceedings (yellow dots on map)
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement district offices (black dots)
• Legal service organizations who provide representation or referrals to immigrants detained (blue dots)

just look at the number of yellow dots... just imagine how many detainees are collectively represented on this map... appalling...

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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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Round 'em up, ship 'em out

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 immigrant detention center
will be your new home

more exciting news from the ice office of detention and removal operations...

Federal immigration agents have arrested 905 people in California in the past three weeks after a statewide search for those who had violated orders to leave the country. The operation was the latest in a series of national sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The arrests were the result of collaboration among teams in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco that began on May 5.

“The focal point of this operation were people who had exhausted all of their due process in the courts,” said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. “They have a final order of removal issued by a U.S. immigration judge, and they’ve failed to depart.”

In the process of seeking each person on the list, Ms. Mack said, agents often encountered friends, family members and others who had violated immigration laws.

“Agents may come to a house looking for a target, and someone answers the door, or there are other people in the house who have also violated immigration laws,” she said.

Brian DeMore, acting director of the federal Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Los Angeles, said agents took into custody any person they encountered during an arrest who had violated immigration laws. Agents set out with a target list of just over 1,500 “fugitive aliens,” Mr. DeMore said, referring to people who have ignored orders to leave the country.

yee-ha...! gotta keep them halliburton-built people warehouses operatin' at full capacity...!

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"ICE why did you take my mom? I want her back"

(see "oops" below...)

this is sad... it's also wrong...

Hundreds of Hispanics marched on Reno streets Wednesday in protest of a raid last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at 11 McDonald's restaurants.

The crowd was filled with young people who skipped school and mothers pushing strollers.

Six-year-old Julio Rodriguez, a first-grader at Smithridge Elementary School, carried a sign that said: "ICE why did you take my mom? I want her back."



Other Hispanic and community leaders met at a different spot to talk about how to tame community tensions and formulate a plan to deal with the fallout of last week's raids, which led to the arrest of 54 illegal immigrants.

are they here to destroy the fabric of the united states...? no... they only want what all of us want - financial security and a better life...

What the Hispanics who have immigrated to Northern Nevada really want to do is work, said Erica Lopez of Reno.

"If it wasn't for us, they wouldn't eat," the 20-year-old said. "We make their food."

She shouted to the counter protesters, "You need us."

i've often said that if all the hispanics in this country, legal or otherwise, were to stop working at the exact same moment, the country would immediately have to shut down...

but here's the really tragic part...

Many young people in the crowd said they were concerned how the raids split up families and wanted to show their support. Some wore duct tape over their mouths -- to signify people they believe do not have a voice -- and handcuffs.



"That's pretty wrong that the raid destroyed the families," said Maritza Solis, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Cold Springs Middle School. "We're only here to work, not to destroy the United States."

i've posted here before about my friend from mexico who, after three unsuccessful tries, managed to make it across the border to work construction with his brother in kansas, only to die in an automobile accident less than a year later, leaving a wife and daughter - my goddaughter - back in mexico without a husband or a father... these people are people, human beings, men and women who love and care for their families, not political pawns... this is absolutely not the way to handle the problem... meanwhile, mcdonald's business in the area takes a slight dip but will soon be back to business as usual... after all, the business of america is business...

[OOPS]

like a dummy, i forgot to cross-reference this post to the post i put up this past saturday about the immigration and customs enforcement office of detention and removal 2003-2012 strategy, titled ENDGAME [PDF], one of the more horrifying and orwellian documents i have ever run across...

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Endgame: The Office of Detention and Removal of the ICE/DHS

residentcynic at daily kos has put up an excellent post on just how the u.s. and our esteemed department of permanent detention for irritating and annoying people homeland security plans to solve the problem of aliens, potential terrorists and all of us who might disagree with or oppose the policies of our government...

I recently spent some time on the web researching the Bush Doctrine and neocon (Straussian)-based policy. What I didn’t expect to find was an operational government program which targets immigrants and "potential terrorists" on a grand scale. Never missing an opportunity for Orwellian titles, the Department of Homeland Security has named this little gem "ENDGAME." [PDF]

Its goal is "the removal of all removable aliens, (including illegal economic migrants, aliens who have committed criminal acts, asylum-seekers required to be retained by law) or potential terrorists." (Executive summary of document)

Can't "potential terrorist" mean, well, anybody?

it's worth reading and i definitely encourage you to do so...

here's the cover page and introduction of the endgame document [PDF] referenced above...





be sure to note the date, 27 june 2003... public law 107-296 [PDF], which established dhs, was passed by congress on 25 november 2002... the office of detention and removal, the unit responsible for the execution of the endgame strategy, was not integrated into dhs until march 2003, not long after dhs began operation as a department... this 49-page strategy was published a mere 6 months after dhs was established and a mere 4 months after the unit was incorporated into dhs... this tells me that the strategy was on the shelf, ready to go long before that...

another interesting item is that the endgame strategy [PDF] references the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798...

The Detention and Deportation Program, now the Office of Detention and Removal (DRO), was established in a 1955 reorganization of the INS to carry out a mission first articulated in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The Alien and Sedition Acts included the earliest deportation legislation, which empowered the
President to order the departure from the United States of all aliens deemed dangerous. Legislation since then has expanded the detention and removal operations and redefined the classes of aliens to be deported or excluded. The basic mission, however, remains the same: Remove all removable aliens.

for those of you who may not be familiar, here's a little bit about the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798...

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws passed by the Federalists in the United States Congress in 1798 during the administration of President John Adams, which was waging an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. Proponents claimed they were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to stop seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, attacked them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800. One act (the Alien Enemies Act) is still in force in 2007, and has frequently been enforced in wartime. The others expired or were repealed by 1802. Thomas Jefferson held them all to be unconstitutional and void, and pardoned and ordered the release of all who had been convicted of violating them.

i haven't finished unpacking yet after coming back from argentina via texas... maybe i should just leave the stuff in my bags in case i have to make a hasty exit when they come for me...

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