Oh Dear, I sure wish that I could not be so opinionated! After watching about half an hour of the “debates” last night; Rick Perry demonstrated his rudeness and inability to follow the rules as he attacked Mitt Romney, not allowing him to speak and without the gavel falling from the narrator Anderson Cooper. Romney, who is usually more courteous, was finally pushed into leaving his normal self and retaliated. Romney is a debater and negotiator – not a backslapping, lying hypocrite. But I digress. I will now refer to the “debates” as the dog fights, if I ever mention them again. If you watched this particular part of the “dog fights”, it was centered on the illegal Hispanic immigrants.
So I turned to one of my usual mellow sites on PBS and clicked on a documentary named “The Detainees”. Surprise, surprise it was about illegal immigrants and something called the Secure Communities Program from ICE.
And I quote “ICE prioritizes the removal of criminal aliens, those who pose a threat to public safety, and repeat immigration violators.” Ref: http://www.ice.gov/secure_communities/
The documentary on PBS explores the effect of the Secure Communities Program in one predominantly Hispanic community near Chicago and the combined efforts of the Local Police, the FBI and ICE to enforce the laws as outlined.
The documentary centered on one family from that area. The mother of two (American born children) and her partner/husband or cohabiter (the relationship was not explained); was stopped by local police because she had changed lanes without signaling. The taillight on her vehicle was not operational. The officer asked for her operators’ license and found she had none. (They didn’t mention whether she had insurance as required by law, but it is a fact that without an OL, she would not have had insurance.) She was taken into custody for driving without a license. A charge of operating a vehicle without proper turn signals, and a charge for having no insurance was not indicated. However, as with all persons taken into custody for any offence requires fingerprinting. Another surprise? NO. She was not a legal citizen. So the woman was detained and sent to a detainment center, where I believe they said was somewhere in southern Texas, to await deportation.
The detention center was shown pictorially and there were a large number of temporary buildings each one housing 200 other detainees, a total of around 2500 as I recall.
Activist for the following reasons decried the detention of this woman:
a.) She entered the country with a valid green card, but it had expired and she “forgot” to renew it.
b.) She had to leave her American born children in the care of her partner/husband or co-habitator, causing a serious child care problem for him.
c.) Her wait in the detention center could be months or years long and as a non-citizen she is NOT guaranteed an attorney.
The Local Police are also against the policy saying that it has made their job much harder because the entire community is now afraid of all policemen, hiding from them as they patrol. They feel that in the past they had friendly relations with the community.
So here are a few “flip” comments:
Is forgetting or not knowing an excuse for an illegal act?
Shouldn’t illegal immigrants be responsible for their children, knowing they might be separated from them when they have been identified as illegal?
Perhaps we should change the laws allowing ALL children born in this country to have automatic citizenship. She could have kept her family together if they had also been illegal.
Are her children going to be offered the benefits of a college education because they were children of an illegal mother? (That would be the Dream Act).
So while the GOP candidates continue their fight about this serious and particular problem; I Thank President Obama. He has accomplished more with this problem than any previous administration.
It would behoove us to publicize the actuality of having been caught in this country illegally.
Through April 30, 2011, more than 77,000 immigrants convicted of crimes, including more than 28,000 convicted of aggravated felony (level 1) offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children were removed from the United States after identification through Secure Communities. These removals significantly contributed to a 71% increase in the overall percentage of convicted criminals removed by ICE, with 81,000 more criminal removals in FY 2010 than in FY 2008. As a result of the increased focus on criminals, this period also included a 23% reduction or 57,000 fewer non-criminal removals.
http://www.ice.gov/secure_communities/
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