It's become a reoccurring dream, readers....
"Six years later, New Bedford raid still stings" by Dan Adams | Globe Correspondent, March 10, 2013
NEW BEDFORD — Luis Gomez clearly remembers the Tuesday morning in 2007 when hundreds of federal agents swooped in on a New Bedford textile factory and arrested 361 illegal immigrants. A high school student at the time, Gomez came home and turned on the TV to see reports about mass arrests at the Michael Bianca factory. His mother, then three months pregnant, was a worker there....
Gomez, now 22, was among dozens of immigrants and activists who gathered Saturday to mark the sixth anniversary of the raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The raid and subsequent deportations, which in some cases separated children from their parents, drew national media coverage and widespread condemnation from activists, state social workers, and Governor Deval Patrick....
In past years, the annual remembrance by United Interfaith Action, the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, and other groups, had drawn small groups of protestors who said they supported the deportation of illegal immigrants.
On Saturday, only one protestor showed up, standing across the street from the church holding a sign that read, “NO AMNESTY/NO EXCUSES.”
Well, you know, are we a society of laws or are we not? Or have we decided that illegality is simply an arbitrary term decided upon by some executive or legislative body?
But activists at Saturday’s gathering said the raid did little to discourage illegal immigration and instead helped galvanize and unite a once-fragmented community.
Must be based on the globe-kicker's model whereby everything they put their hand to goes kerflooey.
“The raid shone a spotlight in a way it wasn’t designed to,” said Lisa Maya Knauer, a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth anthropology professor who also works with nonprofits that serve immigrants....
What’s more, Knauer said, immigrants continue to arrive in the area, drawn by family members who are already here and pushed by tough economic conditions in their home countries.
Who are the geniuses who designed this whole thing anyway? Private central bankers and their lackeys in government. The same people constantly selling you the solution and posing as your savior.
“The strategy of workplace raids and detention and sending people back hasn’t stopped the problem,” she said. “People are determined to come.”
Hey, I'm told it works in the war on terror, so....
One man at the Saturday gathering, who did not wish to be identified because of his immigration status, is perhaps evidence of that determination.
He was arrested and deported in the raid, but returned illegally in 2009 to be with his family.
Through a translator, he recounted in detail the early-morning raid, which happened as he and other workers were settling in at stations where they made backpacks for the military.
I guess that's one of the jobs that Americans don't want(?).
Related: War Looter's Wednesday: Immigrants Matter Most
Well, war profiteer profits matter most, but this is AmeriKa!
“A secretary came over the loudspeaker and said, ‘don’t move from your seats, immigration is entering,’ ” he said. “Everyone got very scared.”
He described chaos as workers ran for the basement, or to the bathroom to try to jump out the window. He said he froze with fear, and was soon handcuffed with plastic zip ties.
As agents organized the workers into groups, women wept with worry over their children, he said.
“My first thought was, ‘will my wife know where I am?’ ” he said. “Tears came out of my eyes.”
He said he spent more than five months in a Texas detention center before he was deported.
Others in attendance were also detained in the raid, but said even recalling it was difficult.
“It’s very painful to think about it. It’s almost not worth remembering,” said Noelia Ramos, a Honduran immigrant who had only been in the United States for five months when she was swept up in the raid, through a translator. “Six years have passed, but the trauma doesn’t go away.”
Imagine being a Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, or any other person who has been subject to such things over wars based on lies, 'eh, 'eh?
Ramos was granted a temporary stay of deportation to care for her then-1-month-old baby.
“I came here just like everybody else, with the idea that I would work and help my family, who was very poor,” Ramos said. “Your dreams, they just fall down.”
I know, I know, they are all here workin' hard and tryin' to put food on the table, even the violent, drug-dealing gangs based on ethnicity.
Some of the illegal immigrants detained in the raid remain in legal limbo, organizers said, living in the United States without official permission, but wearing monitoring bracelets on their ankles or regularly reporting to ICE officials while their cases are pending.
That freedom they told you about sure is strange, 'eh?
“Six years seems like a long time, but there are still lots of people going through the process,” said Gomez, who has since become a local leader of the activist group Student Immigrant Movement. “Wearing the ankle bracelets, reporting to ICE, it’s not like a normal life. … Some [citizens] criticize us, but they don’t see these are just families that are trying to work and make a living like their families once did.”
At the expense of Americans through undercut wages and expenses, but you know.... to say such things is to be branded racist by the lamestream media.
Of course, when I say Americans I mean of all color and gender, and those that have gone through the legal process to become citizens.
--more--"
Related:
Sunday Globe Specials: Initiating Immigration Reform
Sunday Globe Special: Deportation Dilemma
Release of Illegal Immigrants Linked to Sequestration
That sky-is-falling scenario sure came to a sudden end, 'eh? I mean, I'm sure the releases haven't stopped as the agenda continues to be pushed, but it's amazing how urgent crises sometimes dissolve into nothing. Such is the s***-show fooley that is AmeriKan media and politics.
