ICE Raids are Unacceptable Assaults on Democracy

We find it ironic in the extreme that the very week a dying man chooses to spend his last days walking in solidarity with undocumented immigrants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement once again starts raiding local immigrant communities in the dead of night, arresting and detaining almost 100 people with little in the way of due process, and starts trying to hustle them out of Massachusetts at speed before anyone can start looking real close at what exactly is going on here.

Sounds a whole lot like that "rendition" thing that the CIA gets up to of late when it hauls some poor bastard off to a country with, shall we say, rather loose interpretations of human rights law as a "terrorism suspect."

And there's a further irony here since just last week, Open Media Boston co-sponsored a human rights conference and editorialized that it sounded like a fine idea to us that Boston should become a Human Rights City - enshrining all the best international human rights conventions as the bedrock of our own local policy.

Human rights like the right to equality, to life, liberty and personal security, to freedom from discrimination, to freedom from torture and degrading treatment - all of which and more are at stake with this kind of behavior from a branch of the federal government.

Now the immediate reaction of those of you who just don't pay attention to the many real assaults to civil and human rights in the U.S. over the last few years will be to say "Hey, these are a bunch of criminals they're arresting! They deserve whatever they get. And bonus! They're illegal aliens. Good riddance to bad rubbish."

But that kind of attitude entirely misses the point. These raids are not about busting criminals and breaking up gang activity. That's generally handled by local cops, and sometimes the F.B.I., D.E.A. and other key players in the alphabet soup of an already highly questionable criminal justice system.

These raids are about criminalizing an entire class of people in our society. Immigrants. Technically, undocumented immigrants - those who came into the U.S. without official papers desperately trying to keep their families afloat in hard times largely created by the negative effects of U.S. policy in their home countries.

If most or even all of those rounded up in these raids are criminals, then that just feeds the nativist frenzy that has already been allowed to dominate the American media. "You see!," they'll say, "A buncha gangstas! We knew it all along."

These raids are about keeping immigrants rootless, helpless and hopeless. Not about actually getting them to leave the country, though. No, no. The corporations which control American policy absolutely want millions of immigrant workers - undocumented or not - that they can use to help drive wages and working conditions down. But they can't do that if immigrants can organize. Into community groups and unions and various faith-based organizations. They can't do that if immigrants develop strong ties to existing citizen-led organizations. They can't do that if current immigrants can stick around in one place long enough to become a recognized part of American society like every group of immigrants has before them.

So the word goes out from the morass of our thoroughly corrupted and morally bankrupt executive branch (and allies in the other branches of government), "Make them scared ... keep them moving ... don't let them put down roots ... don't let them develop alliances ... and absolutely don't let the build a political base. They are cheap labor and they're gonna stay that way."

And then the Department of Homeland Security - that most Orwellian of neo-conservative inspired agencies (like who the $*&% ever called the U.S. our "homeland") - springs into action, and sends out its dogs in ICE to do its dirty business after midnight in cities and towns all over the country. And some local cops and politicians go along for the ride and some don't. And some citizens buy the propaganda, and some don't.

But regardless, the word screams through immigrant communities, "They are coming for us! Hide! Flee!" And the message gets through, "Keep your heads down ... stay in your place. No more demonstrations. No more May Day 2006. No rights for you. If you're lucky we'll let you keep your sweatshop jobs, and we'll let you keep the war of worker against worker going in this country and on this planet while we continue to make billions off your backs."

Yet there is hope. This cycle of fear can and must be broken. Our very democracy demands nothing less. People need to hang together and hang tough. Citizens need to work with immigrants and figure out political solutions to this mess. Some good stuff is already happening in the Commonwealth - the Welcoming Massachusetts and Jamaica Plain Rapid Response projects are good examples - but there needs to be much more. We invite people of good conscience to post ideas for stopping this repugnant spectacle of the world's most powerful government making war on another large group of poor people in its tracks.

Open Media Boston has an Opinion section. We take op-eds. We have some of our nation's best and brightest round these parts, we do hear tell. Let's see some ideas - and discuss them at length. Let's win the war on terrorism by stopping government terrorism against our communities. And let's sweep away the detritus of failed federal immigration policy and replace it with a rational policy that does what's best for all parties - immigrants, citizens, and working people in general.

Let's make this country the beacon of liberty that our poets have promised but our politicians have never truly delivered.

Let's make an America we can all be proud of.