domestic terrorism
Cops are squealing on undocumented workers
Nik Steinberg, a master’s student in public policy, is talking sense in a debate dominated by anti-immigrant fools. I am posting “Don’t make cops squeal on undocumented workers,” a Christian Science Monitor opinion piece, in its entirety.
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By Nik Steinberg Thu Apr 24, 4:00 AM ET
Cambridge, Mass. – Imagine living in a state where local cops can stop anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally, and arrest them if they lack proof of citizenship. Last month, Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri signed an executive order directing state police to enforce federal immigration law, which will let them do just that.
The order is designed to relieve a financial burden on Rhode Island’s residents. But few reforms could make residents less safe.
From Phoenix, Ariz., to Prince William County, Va., from big-city mayors to small-town councilmen, lawmakers like Governor Carcieri are starting to use local police to root out undocumented residents.
The laws are grounded in a 1996 immigration reform act that lets federal officers train local police to help catch undocumented immigrants.
At first glance, orders like Carcieri’s look ideal. The federal government gets help dealing with the 12 million people who are in the country illegally; local police get free training and more authority; and tax-paying citizens dispose of the unauthorized residents straining their budgets. But it’s hardly that simple.
To begin, such laws make communities less safe by discouraging immigrants from cooperating with local police. Police depend on residents to report crimes and identify criminals. But when immigrants fear that talking to officers may lead to their deportation, they remain quiet.
Proponents of reforms like Rhode Island’s argue that immigrants bring more crime to neighborhoods. They are wrong. Evidence overwhelmingly shows that immigrants – documented or not – commit less crime than US natives. The erosion of public trust is not just bad for immigrants; it is bad for whole neighborhoods.
Politicians like Carcieri tend to cast such reforms as cost-saving measures, which will relieve the strains placed on public services by undocumented immigrants. “We barely have enough resources to take care of the neediest amongst us who are here legally,” Carcieri said in defense of the order.
But tasking local police with enforcing federal immigration law doesn’t come close to saving costs. Finding, arresting, and processing undocumented immigrants is expensive. Prince William County, which passed a similar order last year, estimates having to spend $26 million to enforce the law over the next five years, and its population is only one-third the size of Rhode Island’s.
Financial cost aside, enforcing immigration law demands a considerable time commitment on the part of local law enforcement. For departments already stretched by dwindling resources, pursuing undocumented immigrants detracts from responsibilities like cracking down on violent crime.
What’s more important: going after criminals who murder, assault, and rob US citizens; or tracking down people whose most serious offense is crossing the border illegally?
Kids lose out, too. There are approximately 5 million US children with at least one undocumented parent. When reforms like Rhode Island’s are implemented, undocumented parents tend to pull their kids out of programs like free healthcare and school lunches, for fear of attracting attention.
Thankfully not all cities and states are taking such a hard-line approach. At the beginning of 2006, the mayor of New Haven, Conn., signed an order forbidding municipal police from enforcing federal immigration law or inquiring about any resident’s citizenship.
The impact of the reform was immediate. In the first year that the policy was implemented, major crime fell by 18 percent in New Haven‘s immigrant neighborhood. In the world of police statistics, that kind of single-year drop is almost unheard of. The district commander attributes the drop to immigrants’ willingness to work with police. “You do a lot of problem solving by having that trust with the community,” he said.
Rhode Island’s police do not seem worried about losing that trust though. Last week, the police chiefs association voted overwhelmingly to endorse Carcieri’s reform. The president said the decision came after a “healthy discussion.”
The law-enforcement approaches of Rhode Island and New Haven could not be more different. Where one eradicates immigrants, the other integrates them. Where one enforces immigration law, the other shuns it. But for all their differences, the two orders are rooted in the same problem. As Carcieri put it, “The federal government has not effectively addressed the complex issue of illegal immigration.”
As the number of immigrants in the US continues to grow, the need for comprehensive immigration reform is more urgent than ever. But until the federal government steps up to address the problem, states and cities will be forced to come up with their own solutions. When they do, they should follow the smarter, more practical leadership of cities like New Haven, and not the dangerous, costly reforms of Rhode Island. That’s the way to make America’s neighborhoods safer. And that’s the kind of leadership Americans deserve.
Nik Steinberg is a master’s student in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Gestapo States of America: Enforcing America’s Racial Policy
A new chapter in U.S. racial policy began on March 1, 2003 with the creation of the U.S. Gestapo (AKA U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). As if the American dictator‘s creation of the U.S. Gestapo wasn’t bad enough, local police have joined hands with the Gestapo and are taking it upon themselves to become immigration law enforcers.
Southern states are the new battlefield in America’s war on immigrants and immigration. A commentary piece from New American Media describes U.S. immigration’s new battlefield. Local police across the United States (especially local police in southern states) have taken it upon themselves to to investigate and combat “all tendencies dangerous to the state.”
Here’s what’s happening in xenophobic North Carolina:
What is unique about North Carolina is that it is emerging as a model state for the 247-G program, in which local officials are in collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Thus we have seen a huge rise in local enforcement in the last year for busted taillights, speeding violations, not having a driver’s license.
There are over 20 bills on immigration waiting to be voted on in the North Carolina General Assembly that are all anti-immigrant. They include employer sanctions, English-only laws, making it illegal to get in-state tuition, and increasing the authority of local officials.
Because of the 247-G program, the Wade County courthouse is deporting people out of the courthouse: people report for their probation meeting and are handed over to ICE. In one county, more than 1,100 people were deported. Police officers are personally going door-to-door to catch people with outstanding orders of detention by asking them questions about their status and arresting them if they find out they are illegal.
Here’s the situation in xenophobic Florida:
People are very fearful. Any time they are stopped by a policeman, they are afraid they will be deported. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted early morning, 5 AM and 6 AM raids on Haitians at their apartments in Orlando, for example, in which parents have been arrested and detained for deportation without warning and in the space of five minutes removed from their U.S.-born children and spouses. After about one month of detention, they have been deported, devastating the lives of their children and spouses, and drying up crucial remittances they send to relatives in Haiti.
Here’s what’s up in xenophobic Georgia:
The current immigration debate has created an openly hostile environment against immigrants in Georgia. All foreign nationals in Georgia are urged to be cautious with contact with law enforcement, even for minor traffic violations, because according to the state trooper, it is standard procedure to arrest and detain all foreign nationals for minor traffic violations.
In Alabama, here’s the situation:
There were about 12 different anti-immigrant bills in the House of Representatives in Birmingham. There was one not allowing undocumented persons to vote, which makes no sense because none have voted. Another bill makes an amendment to an existing law. When police stop drivers, the bill wanted to allow them to ask either for driver’s licenses, proof of insurance or proof of entry into the United States, and let them impound their cars. We’ve seen Alabama militia members arrested because they were hoarding weapons and were planning to attack Latinos.
Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo is a bigot:
On a statewide level, the Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo released a statement last week in which he said that it is okay for police officers to check for citizenship status in the course of an arrest. While some police departments were already doing that, for those police departments that were on the fence, it gave them the green light.
Tennessee seems to be full of bigots and racists:
The anti-immigrant sentiment is not just directed at Latinos; it’s affecting the Asian and Muslim communities, anyone who doesn’t look like they are from here.
The U.S. Gestapo and its supporters must be stopped. The members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) must be stopped.
Further reading:
SOURCEWATCH: Project for the New American Century
Project for the New American Century: Statement of Principles (look at who the signatories were)
truthout: Of Gods and Mortals and Empire
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 6 so far )Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a Mess
Reuters reports that The ACLU says a U.S. citizen was wrongfully deported to Mexico.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. government on Monday over what the rights group said was the wrongful deportation of a developmentally disabled U.S. citizen who is now missing in Mexico.
Some excerpts:
ACLU spokesman Michael Soller said 29-year-old Pedro Guzman was serving a 120-day sentence in a Los Angeles jail for trespassing when he was deported to Tijuana, Mexico, on May 10 or May 11 for an alleged immigration violation.
Guzman, who was born in Los Angeles and lived about 70 miles north in Lancaster with his mother, could barely read and write, Soller said. He did not know his phone number and kept his brother’s telephone number on a piece of paper.
But the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in a written statement denied Guzman’s deportation, which followed immigration checks at the jail, was improper.
“ICE only processes persons for removal when all available credible evidence suggests the person is an alien,” ICE officials said. “That process was followed here and ICE has no reason to believe that it improperly removed Pedro Guzman.”
“This is a recurring nightmare for every person of color of immigrant roots,” Mark Rosenbaum, the legal director of the ACLU in southern California, said in a statement.
If a developmentally disabled American citizen of color wasn’t safe from ICE terrorism, no one is safe….
Technorati tags: 
domestic terrorism domestic terrorists immigration
Tancredo Spouts More Drivel
Hitler spouts more drivel…. He’s a dangerous extremist.
The DesMoinesRegister reports that Hitler attributes woes to immigration.
Some examples of drivel from this mental patient:
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo on Saturday appealed to supporters of Iowa Congressman Steve King and took aim at illegal immigration, which he said affects every other important issue in the 2008 presidential race.
Tancredo touched briefly on what he said was the increased number of vaccine-resistant diseases being introduced into the United States from other countries, then forged ahead to what he said is illegal immigration’s impact on national security.
“We know there are people in this country who have come here for the purposes of doing something bad to us,” he said. “We know that they came across our borders.”
Technorati tags: domestic terrorists immigration
Feds Terrorize Immigrant Community in New Haven
The New York Times reports on the terrorizing of New Haven by the feds.
Some excerpts:
The police [in New Haven, Connecticut] adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for dealing with immigrants, and the mayor backed a plan for municipal identification cards. Within the borders of this liberal college town, there was hardly a whiff of opposition.
But starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday[June 6th], two days after the Board of Aldermen overwhelmingly approved the identity card plan, federal agents swept into the largely Hispanic Fair Haven community and arrested some 31 people suspected of being illegal immigrants, many in their homes.
Mayor John DeStefano and other city leaders angrily accused the federal government of “terrorizing” the immigrant community. Many of them speculated that the mass arrests — the first of their kind in recent memory here — were retaliation for the acceptance of municipal identification cards and other immigrant-friendly city policies.
Lawyers and advocates for immigrants who interviewed several relatives of those who were arrested said that in most cases, the immigration officials knocked on their doors and demanded to speak with every adult in the house, then asked for identification.
In several instances, they said, the agents separated the men from the women and asked which of the women had children. Those who did were left behind, while those who did not were taken into custody, the advocates said.
Monique Thibodeaux should be pleased. Monique Thibodeaux is one of a growing number of American bigots. She proposes that all illegal immigrants be given a 90-day period to leave voluntarily. After that, immigration agents, local police and the National Guard, if necessary, should be mobilized to deport them.
Welcome to Police State USA!
Technorati tags: immigration
Border Vigilantes and Other Extremists Must Go!
Guardian Unlimited reports that the Minutemen have declared war on themselves.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Minutemen, the anti-immigrant vigilante force set up two years ago to patrol the US-Mexican border, is in danger of imploding in a row over finances.
The Minutemen and other extremist and/or U.S. terrorist organizations must be annihilated and eradicated!
Technorati tags: border security
Was a Militia or Viligante Group Involved?
Gunmen kill 3 illegal immigrants in Arizona, reports The Associated Press (via Yahoo News).
Excerpts:
Officials have not determined who the gunmen were but believe the driver, who was probably a smuggler, escaped along with a guide. They are still at large. At least two of the immigrants were Guatemalan, officials believe.
Authorities were trying to determine any link to a Jan. 27 confrontation about 40 miles to the north, possibly between human smugglers, that left one man dead and another wounded. In that incident, four men wearing camouflage uniforms and berets stopped a vehicle carrying illegal immigrants.
The gunmen may have been smugglers. Personally, though, the camouflage uniforms and berets conjure up images of extremists affiliated with The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and the Minuteman Project.
Technorat tags: domestic terrorism
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )USA News Round-up: January 31st
News Round-up for January 31st
First, immigration….
Reuters reports that the U.S. plans hike in immigration, citizenship fees.
Excerpts:
The fee increases, which are subject to a review process, are part of a drive by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to overhaul its strained processing system, which leaves many legal immigrants waiting months or years for a green card or naturalization as U.S. citizens.
The fee increases would provide “appropriate funding to meet customer service needs and national security requirements, and (modernize) an outdated business structure,” the agency said.
Incompetent bureaucrats….
Under the proposed increases, citizenship applications would cost $595, up from $330, while permanent residency applications would jump to $905 from $325.
Is The Gatekeeper trying to discourage permanent residency??
Next, the NSA spy program:
AP reports that the DOJ expanded access to the NSA spying program, but not enough to satisfy lawmakers demanding information about the program.
Some excerpts:
The continued demands for more information underscores Congress’ suspicions of the spying program, which President Bush secretly authorized after the 2001 terror attacks without court review. It was not revealed until December 2005, and has been a sore point for many lawmakers from both parties, as well as civil libertarians who fear people’s privacy rights are being violated.”
The warrantless program, run by the National Security Agency, monitors phone calls and e-mails between the United States and other countries that are suspected to be linked to agents of al-Qaida or affiliated terror groups. A federal judge in Detroit last August declared the program unconstitutional, and government lawyers were back in court Wednesday asking a Cincinnati-based appeals panel to drop a civil lawsuit against it.
The Justice Department argued that the American Civil Liberty Union’s lawsuit is moot since the surveillance now is monitored by the FISA court. But the ACLU is asking the appeals court to uphold the earlier decision in August, since Bush retains authority to continue warrantless surveillance.
Finally, one more AP story. The U.S. is losing out on international tourism.
Like…duh! This is news?!
Some excerpts:
Fewer international visitors are coming to the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite an initiative announced a year ago by top government officials.
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Reasons given for the decline include delays in getting visas, long lines at airports and failure to promote the U.S. abroad.
Lawmakers should just go ahead and give the USA a new name: the United States of Absurdity
Technorati tags: homeland security, immigration
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Domestic Terrorists in Our Midst
‘Patrolling to detect alleged illegal activity’ while carrying any weapon would (and should) be a felony, according to a law proposed in Arizona.
WND (found via The Uncooperative Blogger) reports that a law proposed in Arizona would make members of border-patrol groups guilty of domestic terrorism. Under Arizona lawmaker Kyrsten Sinema‘s bill, members of the Minuteman Project or other border-patrol groups could be prosecuted and forced to serve a minimum six-month jail term.
It is my firm conviction that anyone not formally affiliated with law enforcement, who patrols in search of illegal activity while armed, must be treated as a domestic terrorist and must be disposed of in the proper manner in order that these self-proclaimed defenders of the USA will be unable to pose a threat to law-abiding U.S. citizens (and legal permanent residents) of color .
I end this post with a thought-provoking quote from Rep. Kyrsten Sinema:
“Race-based tactics always lead to violence. Remember, the Ku Klux Klan was the first-ever group to patrol the border between the U.S. and Mexico back in the ’70s” (emphasis mine).
Technorati tags: terrorism
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Emerging Libertarian 2 