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October 13, 2008
 Our Friend Michael Chertoff?
By Joe
Guzzardi
In the unlikely event that you missed it,
ICE,
the
Immigration and
Customs Enforcement division of the DHS, is on quite a roll.
Since October 1st, the following
raids and arrests have been made:
-
In California, a
month long sweep ended in the arrests of 1,157 aliens
from 34 different countries. Many had deportation orders or
criminal convictions.
-
In the Miami area,
116 were arrested including 74 fugitives and 42
immigration violators.
-
During a
week-long operation in
Pennsylvania
and Delaware,
ICE arrested 78 immigration offenders including 26 with
criminal records. They included a Mexican who had four
outstanding warrants for DUI and probation violations, a
Vietnamese fugitive convicted of rape and
unlawful sexual contact; and a Guatemalan fugitive who
had convictions for assault, offensive touching, forgery and
driving under the influence. (In
August, working with local police, ICE apprehended 119
aliens in the same two states.)
-
In New Jersey, ICE operations
captured 76 aliens including 21 with criminal histories.
Among them: a
Cuban
male convicted of a felony for possession of a
controlled dangerous substance on school property, a
Honduran female arrested for aggravated assault, a South
Korean female arrested for promoting
prostitution (pimping) and a Brazilian male arrested on
multiple counts for
weapon possession with unlawful intent and aggravated
assault.
-
In South Carolina, at the Columbia Farms
poultry processing plant, ICE
apprehended 300 aliens. A paper work review of 825
workers found that 775 used false information including
social security numbers and fraudulent alien registration
cards. (In July, at the same plant, ICE arrested 12
supervisors for knowingly hiring illegal aliens.)
October’s vigorous illegal alien round up
extends ICE enforcement operations conducted during previous
months, all with similar results.
The arrests represent only part of the good
news.
Notice the geographic
distribution: the
East
and West
coasts, the Southeast, Southwest and
Midwest. For aliens and their employers the message
seems clear: no matter where in America you
might be breaking the law, you could be the next ICE target.
And, another plus, the aliens are from all
over the globe:
Mexico,
Guatemala,
El Salvador,
Honduras,
Nicaragua,
Peru,
China,
Ghana,
Korea,
Brazil
and Cambodia.
Just as quickly as the word once went out
in those countries that the United States is a place where an
illegal alien can enter, purchase false documents, get a job and
live without penalty for the rest of his life, today’s
cautionary message—proceed at your own risk—will spread as fast.
ICE is stepping it up.
During 2007, 30,407 arrests were made,
nearly double the number from 2006. The total for 2008 is well
on its way to outpacing 2007's figures, with 26,945 arrests made
as of August 1.
Since last October, ICE has made 949 criminal
arrests related to worksite enforcement investigations including
105 owners, managers, supervisors or
human
resources employees who now face charges ranging from
harboring
to
knowingly hiring illegal aliens. ICE also made more than
3,500 administrative arrests for immigration violations in the
workplace during the same period.
For the most brazen whose luck ran out but
who felt they could ignore deportation orders, they too now live
in a different world.
ICE now has
95 Fugitive Operations Teams working nationwide that have
made more than 30,000 arrests this year, including over 34,000
fugitives.
Said Nuria Prendes, director of the ICE
Dallas regional office: "If you ignore a judge's order of
removal, ICE will find you, arrest you, and you will be
returned to your home country."[Press
Release]
From Florida came the same
warning.
Michael Rozos, field office director for the
ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations said:
"ICE helps to maintain the
integrity of our nation's immigration system by identifying,
arresting and removing aliens who have ignored a judge's order
to leave the country.... While we are a welcoming country, we
expect those wanting to immigrate here to do so in a safe, legal
and orderly manner. We will continue using all our resources to
ensure that removal orders are carried out and locate these
immigration violators who potentially pose a threat to public
safety."[Press
Release]
Finally, an amusing scene from South
Carolina where plant employee Nicole Freeman said that as ICE
closed in some workers ran for the doors while screaming "
policía! " and "ICE!"
[Workers
ran for doors when federal agents arrived at chicken plant,
witnesses say, Eric Connor and Paul Alongi, Greenville
Online, October 7, 2008 ]
Laughing at other’s misfortune may seem cruel.
But I have long maintained that an alien who knowingly comes to
the US
illegally or falsifies documents to remain assumes an inherent
risk.
Maybe he’ll stay forever
“in the shadows.” But as of today he should be fully
aware that his chance of
deportation—now greater than ever—always looms.
What’s happening since enforcement began in
earnest is straight from the “I told you so” department.
American workers are
lined up to take the jobs that they supposedly “won’t
do.” In Mississippi, at
Howard Industries,
hundreds of applicants queued up.
Other companies
signed up recruiters to find new employees. One firm, St
Louis-based Jacobson Staffing, hired about 900 temporary workers
for
Postville’s Agriprocessors and—extra bonus— ran all of the
new hires through E-Verify to make sure they are authorized to
work in the
U.S.
Another personnel firm, Texas-based Bravo
Labor Agency located about 200 workers and placed them in sugar
cane fields in
Louisiana, dairy farms in
Maine
and grain silos in
South Dakota.
Who do we have to thank for this?
The unlikely answer:
Michael
Chertoff, Department of Homeland Security Secretary—once (and
still) a target of
our scorn
for his support of “comprehensive immigration reform.”
In December 2007,
Chertoff said:
“…I am not prepared to give up on some kind of comprehensive
reform, or at least some progress toward comprehensive reform,
during 2008."
But the most important part of the same
Chertoff speech is this: “…we have the willingness to enforce
the laws the way they are, and that we're prepared to use all
the tools at our disposal to get the job done.”
Being for
“comprehensive reform”
and law enforcement may seem contradictory. But in fact it is
not.
There’s no reason why someone cannot favor and
promote a particular approach to illegal immigration but
obey
the existing laws until such a time as new laws replace
them.
That apparently describes Chertoff, now.
And while I agree that there’s room for
skepticism about Chertoff—that he’s softening us up for the
comprehensive immigration reform kill—I really don’t care.
The bottom line: deportations and arrests are
currently at a higher level than at any time since the
Eisenhower administration, illegal aliens are self-deporting
and the U.S. is much
less inviting a place for those who have law breaking on their
mind.
In the meantime, comprehensive immigration
reform
never happened in 2008. And I
predict it is certainly not going to happen in 2009, 2010…
or any time until the Wall Street crisis ends, if even then.
I tip my hat to Chertoff.
Although I doubt he needs my encouragement, I
urge Chertoff to continue to enforce the law. His get-tough
policies have yielded wonderful results for patriotic
immigration reform fans.
Joe Guzzardi
[email
him] is a California native
who recently fled the state because of over-immigration,
over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He
has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the
growth rate stable. A
long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School,
Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It
currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel. |
