Asked it all the time as a citizen.
"Traffic cases settled, but deportations loom; Minor offenders snared in immigration program aimed at serious crimes" July 03, 2011|By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff
One early evening in May, a Boston police officer arrested Lizandra DeMoura for traffic violations and driving without a license. In another city, she might have been booked and released for a court hearing. But in Boston, the 18-year-old was jailed overnight, taken to court, and handed over to federal immigration agents, who hauled her away in chains.
Now she is facing deportation to Brazil.
“I felt like an animal,’’ DeMoura, who has lived here since she was a child, said in a recent interview in her lawyer’s office in Boston, wearing an electronic monitoring device around her ankle....
DeMoura had lived a quiet life until that night in May, when she borrowed her mother’s car to drive to a friend’s house to print out dance instructions for a church performance. A police officer in Charlestown stopped her for allegedly going through a stop sign and speeding at 40 miles per hour. She was arrested on traffic charges including driving without a license.
She spent the night sobbing on a concrete bench in a Boston jail. The next day a judge dismissed the charges and immigration agents took her to their Burlington headquarters for processing. They affixed a tracking device to her ankle that was finally removed almost two weeks ago. The device made it hard to ride her bike.
Now, she is making plans to return to school and trying not to think about her future.
“It just scares me a lot,’’ she said, twisting tissues in the lap of her yellow sundress. “I’ve been here all my life.’’
**************************
Her case - one of three to emerge in recent weeks - lies at the center of the contentious debate over Secure Communities, a federal program pioneered in Boston that uses fingerprints supplied by police and other law enforcement agencies to detect illegal immigrants.
And you thought it was a sanctuary city and state.
The cases disprove for the first time claims by Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis that the federal program, as implemented by the city, is only being used to root out serious criminals.
After the Globe presented him with these examples last week, Davis urged US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to halt deportation proceedings against them....
Isn't it great having a government that lies to you no matter who you are?
The fact is the whole illegal debate is a big fraud. A big waste of time and resources because illegal labor is enjoyed by the rich and helps to further destroy and lower Americans' standard of living by driving wages down. The same paper that promoted the same system that led to rural flight to cities and across borders now suddenly cares about immigrants?
See:
Hitching a Ride With Homeland Security
Clear the Court: Boning Immigrants
Immigration Incarceration
The Illegal Immigrant Imprisonment Industry
Wasn't exactly in the brochure, was it?
I think I've said enough on the topic. You are just tools, and one that is used to divide us as well (cui bono)?
And the sad thing is we all want the same thing: a good life for ourselves and our kids.
And the interests dividing us all?
The $ame corporate and controlling intere$t$ a$ u$ual.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter controls on immigration, said she believes cases such as DeMoura’s are the exception.
That's okay; Amerikan media often excels at presenting the extreme exceptions as normal -- and other times not. Depends on what the particular agenda calls for that day.
Had Secure Communities been fully deployed, she said, it might have prevented the brutal rape of a Rhode Island woman in 2008 by an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, or this year’s savage murders of a Brockton woman and her son in which police indicted a man from Ecuador. Both men had past arrests.
I'm sorry I let the Ecuador story slide, readers.
“The benefits that the program offers in being able to more easily find all of the really serious cases far outweighs the very tiny risk that a sympathetic case might get caught up in the system,’’ she said. “Though the case might seem sympathetic, they’re still here illegally.’’
Well, yeah, there is that; however, did you just detect a whiff of fascism there?
Hey, if you murder some innocent people via state death penalty, hey, that's the price of doin' bidness and weeding out the rabble, 'eh?
If you spy on or torture innocent people, hey, greater good to catch those "terrorists."
And if you lay a bomb on a home and women and children were killed, well, Taliban or insurgents or Khadafy or whoever ran to that home and we are winning, whoosh-bang!
Yes, I know I am straying a bit here; however, my point is the MINDSET (sig heil) is NO DIFFERENT!
Now, YOUR PAPERZ, pleez!
Advocates for immigrants say that in Boston, Secure Communities makes immigrants afraid to report crime. The Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, an umbrella group, and others have urged Boston to withdraw from the program.
Hey, NO ONE TRUSTS the COPS ANYMORE!
The initial reaction of most Americans when they see the police is a wary "cop," not a beaming, oh-thank-God, "cop." The first instinct is what are they going to try and catch me doing wrong before they pull me over. Somewhere in time the "to serve" part has been lost.
“End the program. It doesn’t work,’’ said Heloisa Galvao, executive director of the Brazilian Women’s Group in Allston. “We had this idea that Boston was friendly to immigrants… . This program, it tells the opposite. We really feel betrayed.’’
Hey, you ARE AMERICANS NOW!!!
--more--"
Related:
"Protesters target immigration law
ATLANTA - Thousands of marchers stormed the Georgia Capitol yesterday to demonstrate against the state’s new immigration law, which they say creates an unwelcome environment for people of color and also those in search of a better life.
Well, Muslims get it the worst, but has AmeriKa ever really welcomed the wretched refuse?
My Amerikan history courses at the college told me about all sorts of slavery and discrimination in the founding on this great land.
Men, women, and children converged on downtown Atlanta for the march and rally, cheering speakers while shading themselves with umbrellas and posters. Capitol police and organizers estimated the crowd at between 8,000 and 14,000 people. They filled the blocks around the Capitol, holding signs decrying House Bill 87 and also calling for an overhaul of immigration laws. (AP)."
I notice that gay protests get the most print, and that global warming and illegal protests often receive favorable coverage.
If you are not part of the agenda, however, you can prepare yourself for insults and innuendo -- if you receive any coverage at all.
