DHS Sweeps - Bush's War on Latino Workers (it's happening)

[donsu]

http://progressivetrail.org/articles/040810Wendland.shtml

It must be their imagination because we aren't doing anything, say Bush administration officials about reports from across the country of increased immigration sweeps over the last two years. Various reports from local media and human rights activists show that immigration sweeps have occurred in Latino communities from Maine, to Chicago, Washington State, the Southwest, and Southern California. The upsurge in sweeps in Latino communities comes in the larger context of raids and surveillance aimed at immigrant Asian and African communities suspected of harboring terrorists. Under the cover of homeland security, the Bush administration seems to have ordered these sweeps to please his ultra right anti-immigration, racist base with the effect of spreading panic and fear in the Latino community. In response, Latino communities have organized numerous protests demanding an end to secret sweeps and immigration raids. Ultimately, systematic targeting of immigrant working class communities have harmful consequences on non-citizens and citizens alike.

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In early December of 2002 a highly coordinated series of raids, which were part of a long term Justice Department effort known as "Operation Tarmac," were conducted at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway Airports and the at the homes of dozens of airport workers. Several hundred workers were caught up in this dragnet, and over 500 of them have since lost their security clearances and jobs at airports. According to one report , "The U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, boasted that these people were arrested ~Qas a lesson' to others" who might try to find work in the US without required documentation. According to Justice Department documents, "Operation Tarmac" was implemented
nationally after September 11th "to promote heightened security" at airports. But, as social policy analyst Paul Street writes, of the 800 workers caught in Ashcroft's airport raids, almost all have been Latino immigrants, and of the 600 people charged since early 2002, none has ever been linked to terrorism.

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Three thousand miles away in the Yakima Valley in central Washington, an agriculturally rich region dependent on migrant farm workers - many of whom are Latin American immigrants and often undocumented - the Latino community protested immigration sweeps this past July. While federal officials denied increased anti-immigrant activities, Washington Growers' League Executive Director Mike Gempler was reported by the Bremerton Sun as expressing "surprise over the more concentrated effort to detain undocumented workers] that has occurred the past couple of weeks."

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A new period of sweeps, according to Lerner, signals the Bush administration's complete break with past policies of decreasing interior sweeps in favor of a highly militarized border patrol ordered by the Clinton administration. Both seem to be priorities for the current administration. And, while community protests against sweeps in the past could "embarrass" federal agencies into being more open and working more closely with community members and ending interior sweeps, numerous large protests have been met with denials and vague responses. The Bush administration has made no gestures to the Latino community except to deny an increase in operations and to insist that the panic and fear in those targeted communities is simply in the imagination of people living there.

Immigration sweeps have created a widespread panic in other immigrant communities as well. Commenting on more recent sweeps in Southern California Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) Director Stewart Kwoh remarked, "The sweeps have created a climate of fear and distrust that affect not just the undocumented, but virtually everyone, including employees and employers." Kwoh continued, "We're concerned that employers may respond by unfairly discriminating against immigrants and others." Though APALC spokesperson Mark Yoshida could not cite new discrimination cases directed to APALC related to recent immigration sweeps, he said in a phone interview that this may be because people simply may not understand their rights. "People might be scared to file complaints," he added, as a result of the federal government's operations. Yoshida also could not cite a case of an employer, manager or corporate executive being targeted or investigated for illegally hiring undocumented workers. Yoshida further pointed out the effect of the sweeps on immigrants of Asian descent. Asian and Pacific Islander communities haven't been the main target for immigration sweeps, but, as Yoshida says, "health clinic appointments are down" because of a "general worry" and a "concern and frustration" with the federal government's policies.

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the article sites many more sweeps all over the country - I could only post a few.

what is the bushgang really up to?

[aquart]

1. Suicide?

I suspect they don't believe any of these illegals have citizen relatives.

Or they could be right. Do new citizens say, I've got mine, screw you?

[madrchsod]

2. guess who`s having a

heart attack over the immigration problems?? restaurant owners and next it will be the lawn care business