Arrests Double in Crackdown on Immigration in New Jersey

Arrests of "illegal"(I subscribe to the notion that no person is illegal) immigrants has more than doubled in New Jersey in the last two years. It is likely to continue with more agents on the streets and the new program "Operation Return to Sender" (oh, they are so clever) in place. In the last year, immigration agents arrested 1,772 people in New Jersey living in the country illegally. The year before -- May 2005 to May 2006 -- they arrested 860. The article heeds attention that only Los Angelas and Miami are arresting more immigrants. As delightful as many think this is there is another side to the story.

The author Elizabeth Llorente of North Jersey.com argues: the raids are over the top, with teams of more than a dozen agents sometimes showing up to arrest a single person with no known criminal record. They bitterly complain that the raids separate families, often taking away the male breadwinner, leaving behind mothers and children who, in some cases, are U.S. citizens.

'These raids are done in front of children, who see their parents handcuffed and taken away,' said Daniel Santo-Pietro, head of the Hispanic Directors Association of New Jersey. "Most of these people are not criminals; they're people who tried to legalize their status and either because their lawyers didn't do something right, or they were misguided by one of the many scammers who take advantage of immigrants, had their applications denied and were ordered deported. The majority are not the criminals and terrorists that ICE says they're targeting with these raids," Santo-Pietro said. "They're laborers, hardworking people."

Out of 1,610 of the 1,772 people arrested for immigration violations most either were avoiding deportation (lawyers not doing thier job) or could not show their papers in a raid by the immigration agents. We can only expect more and more of this as we seek to criminalize people for leaving homelands that either offer no opportunity (especially for women) and no hope for a better life. We ask ourselves what would we do in their situation?

Also here is an article by the Washington Post regarding a study that completely debunks all of the nightmarish Lou Dobbsian xenophobic mentality that immigrants drain our economy.

In the photo above two daughters who are American citizens endured the deportation of their father to Chile after he lived in the United States for 22 years.