There’s over 20,000 of them in New York City alone, bringing bizarre food customs with them (french fries with gravy and cheese curds?), taking highly skilled jobs from Americans, artfully blending in with the populace. Oh the horror. If this peril is not stopped they might attempt to make curling a national sport here.

Yes, Canadians are everywhere. Yet, I’ve never heard of a immigration raid that rounded up Canadians and sent them back to frost land, have you? The reasons for this are obvious enough. Canadians for the most part work highly skilled jobs, and aren’t in factory settings where rounding them up is simpler. Plus, they share a common language with us and their appearance doesn’t stand out.

Thus, their social class and ethnicity makes it less likely they will be deported. Not that I want anyone deported. Funny isn’t it, that neocons and conservatives yell that money and ideas must be allowed to cross borders freely, but want to stop people from doing the same.

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Photo from Steve Rhodes’ photostream on Flickr.

IndyBay has reports and more photos. Counter-protesters greatly outnumbered Minutemen.

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This is a major escalation of tactics by the Bush Administration, jailing them first, then deportation, rather than just deportation.

Charges may be filed against the company who hired them. We’ll see if the company owners go to prison too.

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Further proof, if any be needed, that the “immigration policy” of the US is a dismal failure and arguably run by lunatics.

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The BushCo plan to build a highly automated “virtual fence” at the US - Mexico border is now years behind schedule because, well, all their ballyhooed technological spying devices don’t work.

Software integration issues stymied a timely launch.

In the past, other glitches–including lags in radar information displaying in command centers and newly deployed radars being activated by rain or other environmental factors–have made the system unusable, according to Government Accountability Office investigators

The amount of information being transmitted overwhelmed the control centers, a problem that I think is inherent in any massive surveillance system. There’s just too much data to sort through and act on in anything approaching real time. False positives will abound, genuine threats will be missed. It’s all reminiscent of the faulty US military belief in both Vietnam and Iraq that they could win from the air alone, with no need to get on the ground with troops. That approach didn’t work there and it won’t work at the border.

The system was developed with “minimal input” from Border Patrol agents, resulting in an unworkable “demonstration project” instead of a operating pilot system.

Sigh. For a system to work and be effective, the developers really need to talk to and get input from the end users. Otherwise it probably won’t do what they need it to do thus it won’t be used. Or, like here, won’t work at all. So not only is the idea of Orwellian border fences an affront, they don’t function. Which is probably a good thing.

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Security expert Bruce Schneier gives several reasons why undocumented workers should be allowed to get drivers licenses. Among the reasons, 1) state driver’s license databases contain much data on a person including photos and thus can aid law enforcement, 2) a state DMV does not have the resources to validate citizenship quickly and accurately, 3) if denied licenses, the undocumented will simply get fake ones, 4) if will not stop terrorism because any government-issued ID can be used to board a plane.

We are all safer if everyone in society trusts and respects law enforcement. A society where illegal immigrants are afraid to talk to police because of fear of deportation is a society where fewer people come forward to report crimes, aid police investigations, and testify as witnesses.

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McCain favors immigration reform, Romney doesn’t. Republican Hispanics in Florida went for McCain by a huge margin.

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The resolution, which passed unanimously requests

that law enforcement officers in the city not “exert effort on behalf of federal agents to unearth undocumented residents” who live in Hartford.

From the resolution itself

RESOLVED, That the Mayor assist the Chief of the Hartford Police Department in developing policies that do not hinder the police from properly carrying out their duties in identifying criminal elements and assuring the public safety but to avoid becoming involved in immigration issues or asking the immigration status of individuals detained for other reasons.

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There is nothing wrong with having a debate about immigration. But it is deplorable to falsely stereotype and malign millions of law-abiding people because of one’s desire for a particular outcome in that debate.

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Federal agents then immediately staged an immigration raid.

The mayor of New Haven says the raid is retaliation for the city passing a law designed to give the undocumented a way to provide ID and open bank accounts, calling the raids a “symbolic act of intimidation.”

ICE, in their usual thuggish manner, entered the homes of the undocumented without warrants and didn’t bother to tell the city until well after it was over.

Let’s continue organizing and fighting back against racist assaults that are designed to intimidate and scare. ICE are just the low-paid and not very bright shock troops. The real problem is in the White House and Congress - and in a system that perpetuates and encourages abuses like this.

Since when did warrants become something law enforcement no longer has to use? And if they don’t need warrants to search the homes of undocumented workers, how much long until they won’t need them to search the homes of  citizens?

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Orcinus details how the Minutemen are turning on each other, splitting into warring factions, and, big surprise here, it’s all about where did the money go.

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The Minutemen were harassing migrants at the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana CA. Across the street at an elementary school, kindergarten kids stood on the jungle gym, fists in the air, chanting “Mexico, Mexico” !

Watch the YouTube video.

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Yesterday’s march got a surprising amount of quite favorable media coverage.

Photo by Travis Wilkerson.

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A California judge has ruled neither founder Jim Gilchrist nor three directors of the racist anti-immigrant Minutemen can have control of the group, citing “serious issues concerning the credibility of the claims of both Jim Gilchrist and the defendants…” Thus, the group is now immobilized, pending a full trial. The issue, not surprisingly, is “sloppy accounting and possible fundraising improprieties.”

In other Minutemen news, San Diego police searched the home of local Minutemen founder Jeff Schwilk looking for evidence linking him to vandalism attacks against migrant camps.

The busy Mr. Schwilk has also just been sued for one million dollars by Joanne Yoon, an ACLU contractor, citing his threatening, racist, sickening web posts and emails about her.

Think about Schwilk the next time you hear a Minutemen member lie about how they aren’t racist.

Now a judge thinks they may have been playing Hide The Money… Why am I not surprised?

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ANSWER Coalition organizer Karina Garcia helped lead a large protest against Jim Gilchrist of the Minutemen at Columbia University on Oct 4, 2006. Days after, he stormed off the air on Democracy Now when she debated him. She speaks about that, and of how the virulent racism and hatred of Minutemen needs to be confronted and stopped whenever it occurs because, like their predecessor the Ku Klux Klan, they have support within the ruling class who uses them for their purposes.

Danny Shaw, also an ANSWER organizer, spoke first about Bush’s recent trip to Latin America where he was met with large protests wherever he went and also about the March 17 March on the Pentagon.

Karina Garcia MP3 (16:41 min, 5.6 MB)

Danny Shaw MP3 (8:26 min, 2.8 MB)

Recorded in New Haven CT, 03/24/06 at an Immigrant Rights Forum sponsored by Unidad Latina en Accion and the ANSWER Coalition

Photo: ANSWER organizer Tahnee Stair, Karina Garcia. ULA Organizer Raul Rivera.

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The Minutemen will be marching in Hollywood Saturday in support of two U.S. border patrol agents and one deputy sheriff who were convicted of shooting unarmed immigrants (one was shot in the back.). While most would consider shooting someone in the back to be cowardly and vile, the Minutemen apparently think it’s just fine, so long as the victim has brown skin.

Let’s all be there to greet them with a counter-protest.

Meet at Hollywood and Argyle at 10:30 or at the ANSWER LA office one block north at Hollywood and Yucca at 10.

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In one case, immigrants were awarded a 70 acre Arizona ranch, in another, $98,750 in damages.

May the trend continue.

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With apologies to the blog owner, here’s an alternative take on this Borat business from the Christian Science Monitor:

Sacha Baron Cohen’s crude Kazakh journalist may have originated in a dissertation on the ‘Black-Jewish alliance’ in 1960s America.

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This can’t be true, can it?

Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.

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Karina Garcia is Political Chair of Chicano Caucus at Columbia University and was a primary organizer of the anti-Minutemen protest that took the stage when Jim Gilchrist of the Minutemen attempted to speak there in October. A few days later on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, Gilchrist refused to debate her and hurriedly left the studio instead. She talks about how the Minutemen are just the KKK without the robes, how they have the support of some sections of the ruling class, and must be confronted and stopped.

mp3 (10:44, 3.7 mb)

Recorded at a Party for Socialism and Liberation conference in L.A. on 11/11/06.

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Juan Jose Gutierrez is founder of Latino Movement USA and a primary organizer of major immigrant rights marches, including the historic march of two million in L.A. on March 25. He talks about the struggle for amnesty and where the immigrant rights movement is headed now.

mp3 ( 11:36, 4.0 mb)

Recorded at a Party for Socialism and Liberation conference in L.A. on 11/11/06.

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From the ANSWER Coalition listserv

Mr. Minuteman, Jim Gilchrist, flees debate with student protester on Democracy Now!

This morning, thousands listened in astonishment as Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, abruptly terminated a debate with Karina Garcia, student activist and Political Chair of Chicano Caucus at Columbia University. Last week on Wednesday, October 4, confronted with anti-racist protesters at Columbia University, the Minuteman violently attacked the protesters who were unfurling banners and Gilchrist terminated his speech and left the auditorium.

Gilchrist has spent much of the last week portraying himself as the champion of free speech and open debate, claiming that student protesters prevented any intelligent debate. Today, Mr. Minuteman had a chance to air his grievances and opinions on the events of last week, but after only a few minutes, he abruptly ended the debate. Sitting with his attorney in tow, he cited “legal advice,” pulled off his microphone, and walked out of the studio.

Watch the whole segment.

Send a fax to Columbia University demanding no disiplinary action against the students who organized the protest.

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That Dubya, he’s gone and alienated yet another ally. But hey, it is election time. Neocons need the racist vote. What better way to do that than by promising to build a fence to keep The Hideous Hordes out?

If, in fact, it ever gets built. But then, that’s not the point - mobilizing racists to vote is.

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Solicitation for murder

Prosecutors on Friday charged the deputy city clerk of Maywood [CA] with soliciting the murder of an outspoken councilman who has spearheaded the city’s efforts to improve treatment of illegal immigrants.

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