Thread: Taking a Lesson From Mexico

I apologize if this has been posted already, but I don't recall seeing it.

http://nctimes.com/articles/2006/03/...5_073_9_06.txt

Taking a lesson from Mexico

By: PHIL STRICKLAND - For The Californian

With all the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the treatment of illegal immigrants in this country, no one has yet argued that the conditions under which they are jailed are less than humane.

Perhaps we're just too kind. Maybe we should revisit the quality of the temporary housing illegal immigrants receive at the expense of taxpayers. Just because we educate their children for free, care for their ill for free and employ them off the books to the extent that they can afford to send an estimated $10 billion a year back to their families in Mexico, doesn't mean we have to be particularly accommodating when we incarcerate the ones we actually arrest and are preparing to send back across the border.

Surely, there must be some substandard lockups somewhere in this country where we could house them.


We could crowd them in to the degree that inmates in the nation's "overcrowded" prisons would by comparison be spending their sentences on the wide-open spaces of the Ponderosa. And beds. They don't need no stinkin' beds. Concrete floors would work.

The delicious part of this plan is that Mexican officials would understand.

Consider the lead of this story by the Associated Press: The Mexican government said Tuesday it was stepping up security at detention centers for illegal Cuban migrants after a group of detainees fought police officers and held a guard against his will ---- the seventh uprising or mass escape by Cubans in a year.

The story continues: The riots are fueled in part by the fact that most Cubans are forced to wait for months inside decrepit Mexican detention centers. The Cubans involved in Monday's uprising were demanding they not be returned to the island, saying they feared reprisals there.

How can these ungrateful Cubans imagine that a government so concerned over our treatment of its illegals here would return them to such an oppressive regime?

The story reports that approximately 500 illegal immigrants from Cuba are detained in Mexico each year and that they spend more time jailed than the rest of the 250,000 illegals the Mexican government seizes because Cuba uses the Mexican jail time as punishment.

And punishment it is.

Consider this report from National Public Radio's "All Things Considered": "In many ways, Mexican jails are much worse (than American) ---- massively overcrowded and falling apart."

Other reports say that "in some Mexico jails, hard time is done sleeping on hard floors, sharing the concrete with convicts from aptly named gangs such as the Ear Loppers and the Finger Cutters."

In defense of Mexico, Karina Arias, a coordinator of the migrant-rights group Sin Fronteras, parrots the official explanation that slow consular responses were a factor in keeping Cubans in detention centers for long periods. The other detainees typically are shipped back home in about two days time.

There's due process for you. Oh, and explain about sleeping on concrete floors, please.

Does "Do as we say, not as we do" pop into anyone's mind?

Stop wasting our money jailing these people.

Secure the borders and deport them.

Let Mexico and their home countries deal with their crimes; catch them; prosecute them; jail them.

JUST GET THEM OUT OF OUR COUNTRY AND DON'T LET THEM BACK IN!!

Well, there's always Gitmo!