the DHS plan called "Endgame"

[donsu]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/26/inhumane_raid_was_just_one_of_many/


Inhumane raid was just one of many


IF THE CHAOTIC immigration raid in New Bedford earlier this month troubled you, we have news: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, is just getting warmed up.

We know this because the New Bedford raid was part of a frighteningly ambitious plan laid out by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 -- and it hasn't received nearly enough scrutiny.

The plan is called Endgame, and its details are available online on our group's website (www.aclum.org/endgame.pdf). It's a 10-year campaign to track down and deport all the immigrants to the United States who are living and working here without proper documentation, by the year 2012.

-snip-

Already, on any given day, ICE holds approximately 26,000 people in detention. And on March 6, we got a chance to see Endgame at work on a large scale here in Massachusetts. We saw the human cost of an operation directed at 361 people.

The pace of raids will need to accelerate, however, in order to meet Endgame's aggressive deportation goals over the next five years. We'll see more of the surreal New Bedford-style tactics: arrest first, ask questions later. We'll hear more stories of the human suffering that results from such tactics: of nursing babies who become dehydrated when separated from their mothers, of 7-year-olds frantically looking for their missing mothers, and of minors being flown to distant states without adequate protection.

-snip-

ICE tactics call to mind sinister human rights abuses from other parts of the world. The United States went to war to stop Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo in 1999. We should ask ourselves how, just eight years later, we came to be carrying out a policy that involves such similar tactics -- lightning raids, mass arrests, packed detention centers, and mass deportations.

We must stop it. It's time to bring operation Endgame itself to an end. We need an immigration policy that balances the right to control our borders with the civil liberties we must preserve in order to remain free.
-------------------------------

it's like a circle - the borders are open, people come, DHS holds them, and then deports them.

somebody is making big bucks off this circle. the neo cons that run the holding pens?

[DCKit]

1. Yes, it is a business.

And the continued criminalization of marijuana justifies the existence of several hundred thousand jobs and our increasingly privatized prison system.

However, what is terribly disturbing is that the lack of security on our southern border not only perpetuates the circle, but it's going to bite us in the ass when (if they haven't already) the terrorists begin to cross in numbers. I have heard they're here already.

[endarkenment]

3. yes of course because mexicans and arabs are indistinguishable

What horseshit. The border with mexico is not a conduit for terrorism it is a conduit for people seeking better employment opportunities up north. Seeing as how we have wrecked their economies down south, perhaps we ought to take a bit more compassionate responsibility for the situation rather than engage in fear mongering and fascist police tactics.

[DCKit]

5. Maybe it's living in DC,

but you honestly don't think, as corrupt at the Mexican government, their military and their police are, that a massive terrorist machine couldn't be brought over that border?

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Nope. There are too many people making too much money with

smuggling undocumented workers across the border. If a worker is picked up three times, he just pays three times.

The first time a bonafide terrorist is smuggled across the border the border will be shut down. It will be shoot to kill anyone attempting to cross. The smugglers know this. Just last year, a Coyote informed to the Federales on 4 Yemeni men who wanted to be smuggled across, IIRC.

Now, it is possible for someone to try to cross without help from the smugglers, but I suspect all they have to do is show up in a Mexican border town and they'll be arrested/informed on/killed by Coyotes. They don't want to blow a good thing.

[redqueen]

2. yeah, probably a few groups are cleaning up

shameful...

[tanyev]

4. How about a campaign to track down all the people who employ illegals?

Far more efficient and realistic. Except that they would probably nab a lot of loyal Bushies.

[tulsakatz]

6. exactly!

that's the only effective way of controlling the illegal immigrant situation, in my opinion.

If companies know they will pay a big price for employing illegals, they'll stop hiring them. And if there are no job opportunities here, the illegals won't have a reason to come here.

Although I don't see that happening anytime soon and certainly not in a republican administration.