A clerk tipped off ICE that someone copied an ID card at the court house. No criminal charges have been filed – only what ICE calls administrative charges for illegal entry.
12 of the at least 31 people taken by ICE were immediately released on humanitarian grounds. The others were sent all over. ICE refused to say where ICE sent these people because that is “too sensitive an issue”.
Please share widely!
criticize ICE for doing it’s job. Finally we are attacking the problem of Illegal Immigration through enforcement. I for one am very happy.
The law is one of the very, very few societal resources accessible to illegal immigrants, and apparently the new policy is to further isolate them by making them afraid to deal with justice issues within our legal framework. I’m sure the xenophobes who drive the Republican Party will be much happier with the idea of illegal immigrants taking the law into their own hands. Makes it easier to scapegoat them.
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p>Perhaps next time ICE agents can be stationed at schools. That way, when illegal immigrant parents come to pick up their American student at school, they can be arrested then. That’ll teach the swarthy folks to try to integrate!
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p>Seems that the policy is to make sure that illegal immigrants are isolated from anything but exploitative “employers” who break more laws than their workers. Not that matters — such people aren’t criminals in BushWorld.
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p>
Sabutai, you correctly point out that taking illegal aliens into custody at courthouses decreases access to justice, since it will make those who are here illegally less willing to assert their rights in court. For this reason, ICE, as a matter of policy, should not detain people who have business in the courthouse while they are in the courthouse–e.g., ICE shouldn’t keep an officer in the small claims session and ask the non-English-speakers for identification, etc.
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p>That being said, ICE didn’t detain civil rights plaintiffs here. It detained people who worked as courthouse janitors for a contractor. So while the headline undoubtedly will create a chill, there is a pretty good case to be made that this was a workplace raid, not a courthouse raid. No doubt the gung-ho folks at ICE had the chill in mind when they chose the courthouse contractor as their target, but I don’t suppose a contractor or its employees should be exempt from enforcement of the immigration laws just because the place of business is in a courthouse. This is a close case, in my book.
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p>TedF
Remember: http://www.miracoalition.org/p…
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p>While Mr. Clipper is glad ICE is doing its job, must that job be done in a callous and ham-handed way?
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p>Does America look like “the land of liberty” when a litigant is spirited away in the dead of night?
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p>How do we know those taken to undisclosed destinations – when already represented by counsel are actually safe? Isn’t this like internal rendition?
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p>In “I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land”, by Karolyn Smardz Frost [a book I highly recommend] the point was made repeatedly that the “free” American Republic passed the fugitive slave laws, and the Monarchial British abolished slavery – and African Americans had to flee the USA for Canada to be free. See: http://booksxyz.com/profile308… By the way, “I’ve got a home in Glory Land” is NOT a historical novel, but the discussion of an archeological excavation in Canada of the home of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, who fled to Canada to escape slavery in the USA. Speaking of callous and ham-handed and what happens when the oppressed cannot find any protection in a court of law.
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p>While I am not claiming that Canada, the “Promised Land” of the Underground railway is a similar haven for illegal immigrants, their policy is still far more humane than the Gestapo-flavored tactics of ICE: http://www.sptimes.com/2007/09…
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p>Disclosure: I lost most of the maternal side of my family to Hitler’s Gestapo and ethnic cleansing.
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p>To whisk a human being off into the darkness, leaving children and spouses and grandparents without any idea where they are is NOT why my people came to the United States of America – and not my idea of a government of laws not of men to quote John Adams,
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p>Further, my read is that ICE costs me, as a taxpayer, far more than economic migrants do – and but for illegal immigration Massachusetts would probably lose one and maybe two congressmen.
AmberPaw,
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p>Did you read my comment? I pointed out that the people who were detained were not litigants, but courthouse janitors. This may or may not make a difference–I think it does, because it makes the raid less of an “access to justice” issue than it otherwise would have been–but I am not sure I understand why you assert, in your response, that “litigants” have been “spirited away.” Have I got the facts wrong?
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p>That being said, while it wasn’t the topic of my comment, I mostly agree with your main point, which is that the government should not manipulate prisoner transfers to deprive prisoners of their right to counsel. It sounds to me as though there is some anecdotal evidence that that is occurring, and if it is, it’s wrong. Of course, a prisoner has no right, I think, to be held at any particular facility.
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p>TedF
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p>Just because someone is grabbed by ICE does not mean that there is not and cannot be an attorney/client relationship and certain legal rights.
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p>That “grabbed person” is transformed into a “litigant” at least in my opinion as soon as the “litigant” has an attorney, or asks for an attorney and disputes the actions of ICE [or DCF, or DMH on a Section 12, etc.]- or any official government employee or authorized agent thereof.
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p>I don’t care WHERE they were born or HOW they got here in that regard, at all.
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p>To quote Benjamin Franklin, “Those who give up essential liberties to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
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p>Once ICE is granted impunity from even responding an attorney who says “where is my client” – this is a threat to everyone.
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p>Legal immigrants and citizens have been whisked over seas by ICE following these “ham-handed” raids.
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p>All one has to do is “look like an illegal alien” and you can be whisked away. Want the links? It HAS happened.
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p>There is a reason for due process and the rule of law – and that reason is liberty, fundamental freedoms, part of why the Bill of Rights was needed and passed.
…and the help of a senator and YES an attorney who could find him, his sisters, his parents….Sorry about all the typos above, I got really steamed on this one.
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p>I HATE the
“guilty until proven innocent” holier than thou attitude of some.
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p>Just doing their jobs.
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p>Just following orders.
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p>There is a REASON for the rule of law and basic due process.
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p>EABO it could happen to YOU.
AmberPaw,
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p>Oh! You were using the word “litigant” because the people detained were challenging the government’s attempts to deport them, not because they were actually litigants at the courthouse where they were taken into custody. Then I guess we don’t disagree, though I still am not sure whether you would draw the distinction I’ve drawn, namely, the distinction between a raid of litigants at a courthouse and a raid of employees who work in a courthouse.
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p>TedF
I support the tactics used by ICE to find, identify and deport all and any illegal immigrant residing the US. I do wish the State of MA would grow some balls to also hand out some serious fines to companies who are illegally hiring people who do not have legal rights to work in the US. Arizona is doing it and illegal immigrants are fleeing the state in large numbers.
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p>Many legal Americans need help and many new Legal immigrants help, let’s coordinate our efforts to help these fellow Americans.