ICE Chills Mississippi
The agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted another raid, this time in Laurel, Mississippi, according to this article in today's NY Times.
In another large-scale workplace immigration crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally.
Numerous agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on a factory belonging to Howard Industries Inc., which manufactures electrical transformers, among other products.
As of late Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed, said Barbara Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, but she said that dozens of workers had been “identified, fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed and processed for removal from the U.S.” ...
The ICE spokeswoman, Ms. Gonzalez, said the workers would be taken to an ICE detention center to “await the outcome of their cases.” She said 50 would be “released into the community” instead of being sent to the center, for “humanitarian reasons,” including medical difficulties or the need to take care of children.
She said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated. “Everyone will have due process under law,” Ms. Gonzalez said. [Emphasis added]
Oops...Ms. Gonzalez has fallen through the Looking Glass. No lawyers were present during "interrogation," yet "[e]veryone will have due process under the law"? Were the workers notified that they had a right to have a lawyer present while they were being questioned? Were they given any Miranda rights? Yet they can count on good old fashioned American due process?
Since it's clear that the US government has a rather unusual conception of due process, presumably it has a rather unusual conception of other traditional values, as an immigration rights leader noted quite forcefully:
Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, called the Laurel raid a violation of human rights.
“We’re very disturbed at what’s happened,” Mr. Chandler said. “It’s a real contradiction between our proclaimed values of hard work and family in Mississippi and the actions of local law enforcement, and ICE. I think it’s a real affront to our values. They’re creating their own terrorism by going after workers.”
Shameful.
In another large-scale workplace immigration crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally.
Numerous agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on a factory belonging to Howard Industries Inc., which manufactures electrical transformers, among other products.
As of late Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed, said Barbara Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, but she said that dozens of workers had been “identified, fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed and processed for removal from the U.S.” ...
The ICE spokeswoman, Ms. Gonzalez, said the workers would be taken to an ICE detention center to “await the outcome of their cases.” She said 50 would be “released into the community” instead of being sent to the center, for “humanitarian reasons,” including medical difficulties or the need to take care of children.
She said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated. “Everyone will have due process under law,” Ms. Gonzalez said. [Emphasis added]
Oops...Ms. Gonzalez has fallen through the Looking Glass. No lawyers were present during "interrogation," yet "[e]veryone will have due process under the law"? Were the workers notified that they had a right to have a lawyer present while they were being questioned? Were they given any Miranda rights? Yet they can count on good old fashioned American due process?
Since it's clear that the US government has a rather unusual conception of due process, presumably it has a rather unusual conception of other traditional values, as an immigration rights leader noted quite forcefully:
Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, called the Laurel raid a violation of human rights.
“We’re very disturbed at what’s happened,” Mr. Chandler said. “It’s a real contradiction between our proclaimed values of hard work and family in Mississippi and the actions of local law enforcement, and ICE. I think it’s a real affront to our values. They’re creating their own terrorism by going after workers.”
Shameful.
Labels: Immigration
posted by Diane at 3:56 AM
2 Comments:
We cannot do anything against global warming because it will harm the economy, but harming the economy by removing 350 out of 20 Millions people who came to this country to earn a decent living is fine.
It seems that the reason for the raids is racial because even if they do it every day of the week we still will have 20 million people ICE hates.
It's worth noting also that the company that hired these 350 "illegals" is facing no charges whatsoever. Zip. Nada. Nuff said. These raids are about nothing other than throwing red meat to rightwing bigots at election time.
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