NY Times Editorial: The Widening Dragnet .....The Admin's Discredited Immigration Program

The Widening Dragnet

August 14, 2011

The Obama administration has decided to stick with Secure Communities, the discredited but rapidly growing immigration-enforcement program that has helped it deport a million people in the last two and a half years. And not only stick with it, but force it down the throats of state and local leaders and law-enforcement officials, including the governors of New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, who have rejected the program, saying it is badly flawed and does more harm than good.

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This has infuriated police chiefs and other law-enforcement professionals who say Secure Communities hurts community policing because it makes innocent immigrants fear the police and erodes the trust and cooperation of crime victims and witnesses. It also increases the danger of racial profiling and other constitutional abuses in immigrant neighborhoods.

Add the fact that the program sweeps up huge numbers of noncriminals and minor offenders — and has been plagued since its inception by miscommunication, deception, opacity and suspicion — and you have a program whose plug desperately needs pulling. But local objections are no longer an issue. The feds are insisting that Secure Communities will be imposed on every state by 2013, and no one can opt out. It’s nonnegotiable.

This has been the Obama way on immigration. He talks softly of giving hard-working illegal immigrants a chance to get out of the shadows and get right with the law, but has achieved nothing, through legislation or executive action, that would allow that to happen. All the while, the administration has moved to ramp up deportations, expanding the brutal efficiency of a system that Mr. Obama has acknowledged is broken, arbitrary and unjust. .....

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-widening-dragnet.html?ref=opinion

Has a heart disorder, been here since a small girl (now in her thirties). Her husband stays, her citizen children stay, she is most likely on her way to Mexico - a place she has no memory of - all under policies continued by this administration.

There is no such thing as a resident alien program anymore. None.

I no longer know America.

If she is in her 30's and been here since she was a small girl she was probably here for Reagan's amnesty. And my husband is a resident alien, so I don't know where you get your info.

Her husband told me he is a resident alien... could be he lied to me. Hmm, wonder why that might be...

Do you know the cost of "getting legal"? Are you familiar with how bureaucracy works differently in parts of this country? Law is not evenly applied, not one bit. Having not been there, I can not give you the answer you seek, I can only relay what I was told. Based upon my own observations of the last few years, however, I have no reason to believe that immigration law and services are evenly applied across America.

And bottom line, she is no longer in the home.

**Edited to change INS to ICE

But it was almost one third that less than 10 years ago.

If she couldn't be asked to do what it took, she doesn't deserve to be here. And she failed her kids.

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=3faf2c1a6855d010VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD

Unemployment is at 38% there. THIRTY EIGHT PERCENT. Her husband is employed part time working the fields. She has a HEART DEFECT and NO insurance. They have one car, rent, insurance, and food to buy, not to mention school supplies, clothing, etc. Tell you what, missy - since money seems to be no object for ya, hows about YOU cough up the $1,070 as well as the cost of legal representation (if she gets any) to help her at least be released from detention.

As long as you've got yours, right?

Posts like yours make me very sad. Opinions and beliefs such as yours are surreal. Karma, lady, karma. And perhaps, with ZERO empathy and compassion for the plight for those less fortunate than most here, DU is the wrong place for you to be posting.

Why leave a country with Universal Health Care to illegally come to one with the worst health care system in the Americas?

of the family at the time, since you seem to know so much about them?

I don't know how old she was when she came here; her husband said she was young. In this instance, "young" is a relative term. When she came, again, I don't know.

I do know she has a heart defect. I do know she has small children. I do know that she was not receiving any medical care - she told me she was not eligible. I do know she took her children to a Federally Qualified Rural Health Clinic. She told me directly that she is not a citizen, but that she is here legally. And I do know that last week she was detained and has no legal representation.

This is all I know about her 'situation'... but I do know, like you, I don't know enough to pass an armchair verdict of her, unlike those posting above us.

I also know that there is a very valid fear in the Hispanic community that any one can be picked up at any time without any cause.

And finally, I know that like the article states, Obama has failed us yet again. And by 'us', I mean all of those living, paying taxes, and raising families in this country.

Thanks for your post, E... your voice can always be counted on for support of human rights and liberal matters here at DU. :hug:

So this punitive policy of Obama's which rips families apart is completely gratutious, in addition to being shortsighted. The Latino community is a community of extended families. Good luck to Obama turning them out next time.

and then DU open-border utopian dreamers whine that those hard-working illegals are all now out of a job that they never should have had in the first place.

The "real lawbreakers" include every person who illegally crosses the border - that is a crime, you know?

since before there was a US. Expecting that to stop makes YOU the utopian dreamer.

The last time he talked about immigration on the stump, maybe two weeks ago, the DreamAct kids were all over his case on the intertubes and they were right.