Enforcement on Steroids: Homeland Security's Emerging Immigration Police State

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9111

by Joshua Holland

By , AlterNet. Posted May 21, 2008.

Forced drugging. Abuse. Death. That's what workplace-based immigration enforcement without deeper reform looks like.

Last week, hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, flanked by helicopters, a trail of SUVs and a convoy of buses, descended on the tiny town of Postville, Iowa. They set up a perimeter around the 60-acre kosher meat-processing plant operated by the global giant Agriprocessors, Inc. and conducted the largest workplace raid in U.S. history. Around 400 people were arrested -- most from Mexico, Eastern Europe and Guatemala -- representing 40 percent of the plant's workers and 17 percent of the town's population. Warrants for another 300 were issued.

Some would call it a victory for law and order. But a closer look at the showy example of "getting tough on illegals" offers some insight into what immigration restrictionists are really asking for when they call for more immigration enforcement.

During a similar sweep last year, ICE generated some bad publicity when reporters found that a number of young children had been left unattended when their parents were arrested. So 56 of those arrested last week -- mostly mothers of small kids -- were released on "humanitarian grounds." Nonetheless, a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of dozens of the Postville detainees "noted that a number of immigrant workers' children have been stranded with baby sitters and other caretakers as a result of the raid."

The suit charges that some of the detained workers are victims of crimes by Agriprocessors, Inc., which may entitle them to a visa, and accuses the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of arbitrary and indefinite detention and violating the workers' constitutional rights.

According to the Associated Press, an attorney who interviewed some of those swept up in the raid said that the company itself "obtained false identification for immigrant workers." But in the overwhelming majority of these raids -- 98 percent, according to the Washington Post -- the only people to pay any penalty are poor people trying to earn a substandard wage working in America's growing unregulated economy.

FULL story at link.

[midnight]

1. This theme repeats over and over again.

the only people to pay any penalty are poor people trying to earn a substandard wage working in America's growing unregulated economy.

[justinaforjustice]

2. First They Came for the Jews, But I Was Not A Jew, So I Didn't Protest.

We cannot allow these inhumane attacks on innocent workers and their children to continue. I have a strong suspicion that these wholesale raids on immigrant populations are actually practice runs for Bush-Cheney's plans to declare martial law and to arrest anyone who resists. We must start resisting now by inundating our state representatives and federal congressional representatives with demands that they legislate against such draconian police state tactics.

[Old Codger]

3. at the

very least they need to prosecute the employers also , equal treatment under the law goes for th ecompanies also..

[AnnieBW]

4. Lou Dobbs must be having a 'gasm

about this. This is his wet dream come true.