INS roundups in Southern California
In
the past week or so, the INS has been staging lightning fast raids in
heavily Latino areas, swooping in, setting up roadblocks, demanding
papers, then immediately deporting anyone with out papers. These traps
are always in Latino areas, and frequently at swap meets, supermarkets
and even outside churches on Sunday.
Organizers
estimate that at least 7,000 have been deported recently in these
raids, which have mainly been in SoCal, but also in northern California
and Detroit. No one knows why they are happening. Maybe Bush is
throwing red meat to his right flank, trying to energize them to vote
in November. The INS says no raids are happening, as they continue to
stage more of them.
What
is clear is that that the raids are racist. I mean, I’m not hearing of
INS roadblocks outside the English and Irish bars in Santa Monica, and
lots of people in those bars don’t have papers either. Plus the raids
target the absolute poorest and the least able to defend themselves.
Latino Movement USA is calling a march and demo this coming Saturday in downtown LA. 11 am. Assemble Broadway & Olympic. March to downtown Federal Building. Be there! Info.
PS From an LA times Op-Ed this morning
Latino neighborhoods
throughout Southern California are in a state of near panic over a new
policy of seemingly random arrests of illegal immigrants by the Border
Patrol.These patrols might be
defensible if they were part of a comprehensive immigration policy that
reflected some degree of statewide and national consensus. But there is
no such policy and no such consensus.Illegal immigrants from
Latin America could be forgiven for suspecting that these
contradictions are actually part of a coherent immigration policy after
all. It is a policy of guaranteeing employers a source of cheap and
docile workers. And random arrests in places these people formerly
thought were safe would fit perfectly into such a policy. We do not
believe that an approach so cynical is the actual, unspoken immigration
policy of the United States. But we do believe that the convenience of
the current mess for many powerful interests reduces the pressure for
comprehensive immigration reform.It is senseless and heartless to impose misery
and terror at random among the large communities of illegal immigrants
we allow to live here.