Thread: Oregon-Racist Hispanic Advocacy Group CAUSA Spews Propaganda

Below is an entry from their racist website.

[b][color=darkblue]Two Years and Four Thousand Arrests Later: Del Monte and the ICERaids, An Update

by Stephen Manning, Sarah Loose, Alice Perry

A few hours after dawn, several white unmarked vans departed from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in downtown Portland. Workers, most of who lived in North Portland, had left their homes earlier to arrive at the Fresh Del Monte food processing factory, donning their safety clothes and gear to begin another workday cutting and packaging fruit. By 10:30am, agents had spilled from the unmarked vans and surrounded the factory. It was June 12, 2007. The most ferocious immigration raid in Oregon and, at that time, in the United States was underway. By late afternoon, 168 individuals had been arrested.

Since then, ICE has arrested some 4,345 individuals in large scale raids. As the Portland community dealt with the raid and in communities across the country reacted, we learned many things about ICE, about immigration, about ourselves and, most importantly, about our communities.

First, we learned that the whole theory behind ICE’s large scale raid tactics was illegal. ICE’s mantra was that immigrants are criminals. A few months ago, in a case called Flores-Figueroa v. United States, the Supreme Court rejected that theory in a unanimous decision.

Second, we learned that raids like Del Monte have negative impacts beyond just the individuals detained. In Portland, teachers struggled to explain to children why their classmates had suddenly disappeared, even as many children including citizen children expressed fears that they too would be taken away. Massive amounts of energy and money went into dealing with raid’s aftermath. Two years later, the emotional and financial costs to the Portland area are still undetermined. Children are still separated from their parents. Faith communities struggle to provide support to detained immigrants who are still awaiting resolution of the immigration court cases. It became clear that when the due process rights of our legal system are ignored in the context of a raid, we all suffer.

For example, in Postville, Iowa, the scene of another massive raid a year ago, the entire town is at the point of going bankrupt. There is an eerie abandoned quality to the town from the schools to the shuttered businesses. The town shrank by half. "It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Postville-Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, resigned earlier this year.

Third, we learned that enforcement only – deportation – will solve nothing and is a waste of time and money. In Postville, the initial price tag for the raid was more than $5.2 million in government costs. In Portland, we are still assessing the financial costs of the Del Monte raid. The economic impact locally has been substantial. Nationally, the number of people detained annually is triple what it was just ten years ago, with an annual cost of $1.7 billion, yet the problems with our immigration system have not been resolved. Ultimately, deporting people does nothing to address the root cause of migration and it underscores the need for a reasonable, rationale solution.

Fourth, we learned that there is no “lineâ€

Illegal aliens equal deporting law breakers.

[quote]We learned that Oregonians are also sensible about reforming the immigration system – Oregonians on all sides of the political spectrum. People prefer “a comprehensive approach that secures the border, cracks down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and requires all illegal immigrants to register and meet certain requirements to become legalâ€