Thread: Congress should make sure immigration officials back off Bus

Sun Editorial:

The usual suspects
Congress should make sure immigration officials back off Bush era round-’em-up policy
Mon, Jun 22, 2009 (2:04 a.m.)

Two weeks before Christmas 2006, more than 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants across the country. The agency had arrest warrants for 133 people who were accused of identity theft. They made up a tiny fraction of Swift’s 12,000-person workforce.

However, instead of going into the plants and individually making arrests, agents shut the plants down. They corralled all of the workers, searched them and questioned them. Employees, most of them U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, were denied food, water and the use of a restroom for as many as eight hours. Several citizens who were never charged with a crime sat in handcuffs for long periods.

Agents arrested more than 1,200 people for alleged immigration violations. Bush administration officials called the raid, the largest by ICE, a success.

To the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents many of the workers, the Swift raid is an example of what is wrong with immigration enforcement in the United States. The union convened a panel to study immigration enforcement, looking not only at the Swift raid but also at several other federal raids. In a report released last week, the panel, which included Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, blasted ICE’s tactics.

University of California law professor Bill Ong Hing, who was part of group that wrote the report, told the San Francisco Chronicle he was “totally shocked by the level of abuseâ€

Love the comments left. The writer is certainly on the wrong side.