October 4th, 2007
Your Tax Dollars At Work: US Immigration Policy Still Stupid, Pointless
From The Alibi, Albuquerque’s alternative newsweekly:
Without much notice, the federal government was authorized last year to make large cash payments to every U.S. county government along the U.S.-Mexico border. These payments were to cover the extra cost of law enforcement for issues related to undocumented immigrants crossing in increasing numbers…
What occurred next [in Otero County, NM] was a mess, pure and simple. The deputies set up phony “speed traps” in Chaparral, the largest unincorporated community in the state, an amalgamation of trailers, shanties and newer homes built on the outskirts of El Paso. Perhaps as many as 20,000 people live in Chaparral, many of them recent arrivals from Mexico…
Persons stopped by the “speed traps” (no radar was employed and no Anglo drivers were stopped) were questioned in Spanish. If they answered in that language, the deputies beckoned a couple of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents who happened to be waiting nearby. If citizenship or residency papers couldn’t be produced, the ICE men took them into custody on the spot. Sixteen people were detained before community outcry blew the whistle on this ill-considered venture.
If the detainees indicated they had children in school, the deputies accompanied them to the school to remove their kids, according to school officials. The sight of their parents sitting handcuffed in the principal’s office, coupled with their impending deportation, had to have shocked the children. The mind boggles at the genius who dreamt this scheme up.
Since many of the children of undocumented residents are themselves citizens, born in this country and frequently never having even visited Mexico, “Operation Stonegarden” seems to have been designed to break up families…
…what the heck was this supposed to accomplish? Cosmetic “law enforcement” of this sort may be intended only to send a message. Unfortunately, for many living in Chaparral, the message received was to stay as far away from local police officers as possible. That is no solution.
If illegal immigrants believe calling the police will result in being turned over to la migra, they will simply not call the police. Crimes will go unreported, witnesses will vanish and victims of domestic violence will suffer in anonymity. None of those results benefit the community.
It’s only polite to answer someone in the language in which they address you, if you can; if a cop asked me a question in Spanish I’d answer in Spanish, and if I didn’t have my birth certificate and social security card on me, I could be in jail right now. Oh, but wait–no I couldn’t, because I don’t have brown skin. Silly me, I’d never’ve been stopped in the first place.
I suppose you have to give the powers that be some credit; it can’t have been that easy to come up with a way to make the bigoted flag-wavers think something’s being done about all those “illegals” come to steal our jobs, without actually reducing the numbers of desperate people available as cheap labor for Bush’s corporate pals. The only cost is trauma and upheaval to a few poor families, oh, and the cool $1.2 million per border county to perpetrate this sham.
Are you still paying your taxes? Why is that again?
Read the full article here.
