In any society, there will be tensions between order and liberty – this is inevitable. But all too often, the United States government pushes this tension far beyond the limits imposed by our Constitution, laws, and traditions. Last week, federal agents raided six meatpacking facilities and arrested more than 1,200 workers. Immigration officials stated that the purpose of the raids were a culmination of a year-long investigation into an organized crime ring that involved massive identity-theft that has “victimized large numbers of US citizens and lawful US residents.” Dubbed “Operation Wagon Train,” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the campaign took place on six meat-processing plants owned by Swift & Co. in Greeley, CO; Grand Island, NE; Cactus, TX; Hyrum, UT; Marshalltown, IA; and Worthington, MN.
The rhetoric used by ICE intends to convince us that that the workers who were detained had used the stolen identities of US citizens and lawful residents to get their jobs. ICE chose their dark words wisely – “identity theft,” “stealing identities” “deportees” – and with the goal of terrorizing us all into believing that a million illegal border crossers are using stolen Social Security number to apply for credit cards and charge expensive stereos, trips, or a boat and a couple motorcycles. The timing of the raid is also no accident. By singling these immigrants out and persecuting them in the name of identity theft (an egregiously unusual tactic, as more than one site pointed out at the time), ICE is able to heighten the concerns of many tinsel-fringed gringos already maxing out their credit cards this holiday season.
Yet, of all of the 1,282 workers who were apprehended, only 65 of the undocumented workers have been “charged with criminal violations related to identity theft or other violations, such as re-entry after deportation,” according to an ICE press release. So…if only a small fraction were “charged” on ID theft violations, then why were there so many arrested? This is obviously another failed operation bearing the trademark stamp of the much-vaunted Department of Homeland Security.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this wasteful and harmful operation is what reportedly transpired during and after the raids. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Latinos were subjected to racial profiling. ICE agents separated workers by their skin color – those who were considered gringo looking were considered civilians, while those who failed the darker-than-a-grocery bag test were the “illegals.” Latinos were subjected to racial profiling. ICE agents separated workers by their skin color – those who leaned toward a gringo-esque appearance were considered civilians, while those who failed the darker-than-a-grocery bag test were the “illegals.” What is the lesson to the larger community?
[Maria] thought she was going on break from her job at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant … but instead she and others were forced to stand in a line by U.S. immigration agents. Non-Latinos and people with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue bracelets.
The rest, mostly Latinos with brown skin, waited until they were “cleared” or arrested by “la migra,” the popular name in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), employees said.
“She [the agent] told me, ‘Do you think it’s going to be cold in Mexico?'” Maria said, holding back tears. “I’ve never seen people get treated como animales.”
Once again, the “round them all up, ask questions later” policy swept up another US citizen. It is time we start asking, how many US-born Latinos are being arrested by bigoted federal agents because they fit their xenophobic profile of an “illegal.”
There is no doubt that the argument behind the latest round immigration raids is questionable, but what is most disturbing is the fate of the detainees in the wake of it all. According to Narco News, many of undocumented workers were loaded on buses like cattle and transferred to “undisclosed locations.” One such location was Camp Dodge. Why they were moved is anybody’s guess.
“I heard ICE is shipping them [the detained Swift workers] all over the country,” Joseph says. “Two bus loads [from Colorado] were sent to facilities in El Paso to hold people.”
There is also another danger; ICE could possibly trick these people into signing away their rights by agreeing to voluntarily deportation.
[Jeff Joseph, a Denver lawyer and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association] said the officials tell the detainees that they do not qualify for relief, and that they will spend the next few weeks in jail for weeks without seeing their families, so they might as well sign a stipulated order of removal.
“That’s just not true because many of them may be entitled to stay here,” he said.
If ICE could only muster up 65 people with ID theft (and if there really are any), with the fallout splitting up and terrorizing thousands of workers and their families, then why did ICE have to raid the plants in such a way?
Some have already come up with possible reasons that led to these raids. Duke1676, at Migra Matters suspects that one of the main reasons for the raids had to do with union busting.
The Administration appears to be using these raids to send a powerful message to those unions that favor comprehensive reform but have not signed on to Bush’s guest worker program that they better get behind plan. For unions like the AFL-CIO, LIUNA (Laborers International Union), and particularly the United Food and Commercial Workers UFCW the message is clear.
In fact, there is a long history of immigrant workers facing heavy odds when it comes to union organizing. In case after case, organizing efforts among immigrant workers have consistently come up against the same problem – the use of immigration laws to purposely prevent them from organizing. And union-busting just happens to be a favorite weapon of conservatives, used to drive down wages.
During the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan reduced enforcement efforts of the Sherman Anti-Trust and similar acts, it resulted with the Labor Department becoming hostile to labor and producing an environment that made it easy for businesses to exploit undocumented immigrants. In fact, before Reagan came into office in 1981, there was no demand for a fence to keep out the brown horde, or a demand to enforce the laws against undocumented immigrants. During that time, more people were joining unions at a high rate, and this served as a barrier to such things. What Republicans won’t acknowledge is that it was their corporate greed that opened a Pandora’s box. After all, where does all the money come from that “spills over” to the CEOs and stockholder dividends? This money does not exist until the cost of labor goes down.
Sure, they beat their chests and waxed grandly about building fences, but that was done just to exploit the fears many Americans have, all the while stabbing them in the back to maintain the status quo. This is why none of the bills introduced this year addressed the fundamental truth of the situation: Conservatives and the businesses they represent need to maintain a large, illegal or marginally legal workforce to keep down the price of labor and help them to destroy the union movement.
Still, why did ICE have to spin this as a crackdown on identity theft? One possible explanation is that it was done so ICE could divert nosy people from looking into their repeated failures when it comes to similar major work-site crackdowns. In 1999, ICE’s predecessor, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched “Operation Vanguard,” a program aimed to root out undocumented workers by a comprehensive investigation of the employment eligibility records of all meatpacking employees in Nebraska. Vanguard smacked the state of Nebraska with a reality 2 x 4 when they realized the integral role that immigrants play in the economy. All it took was the INS raiding a Nebraskan meatpacking plant. The aftermath of a similar work-site crackdown in December of 2000 resulted with the deportation of more than 200 workers — who happened to be vital to the local pre-Christmas economy.
The economic impact of Operation Vanguard on the state was so profound that Gov. Mike Johanns appointed a task force to study its statewide effects. In October 2000 the task force recommended against a resumption of the program and for endorsing amendments easing restrictions on permanent residency and citizenship and considering an amnesty.
The Bush administration claims it is learning from past failures, yet it is obvious that they are not a quick study. The lessons of Operation Vanguard have gone unlearned, and in fact seem to be completely disregarded in favor of aggressive escalation of the same faulty thinking that led to Vanguard. Note the comments made by ICE chief Julie Myers, trumpeting the raids as a victory in the “war against illegal immigration.”
“This investigation has uncovered a disturbing front in the war against illegal immigration. We believe that the genuine identities of possibly hundreds of U.S. citizens are being stolen or hijacked by criminal organizations and sold to illegal aliens in order to gain unlawful employment in this country. Combating this burgeoning problem is one of ICE’s highest priorities,” said Assistant Secretary Myers.
Was this a Freudian slip? When was there a call for a “war” on immigration?
Unrestrained behavior in the name of protecting security is not new in our nation’s history. During the 20th century, hundreds of American citizens were prosecuted for anti-war statements during World War I, and thousands of “radical” immigrants were seized for deportation during the 1920 Palmer Raids. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese-Americans were apprehended and imprisoned in detention camps, right here in the Land of the Free.
After 9/11, we have frequently seen our Government adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy and reminiscent of former President Reagan’s national security initiatives. With the unending “war on terror,” the current Administration has been consistent in allowing programs to vacuum up intelligence about lawful activities of American citizens. In 1940, Attorney General Robert Jackson recognized the inherent dangers of using broad labels like “national security” or “subversion” because there was “no definite standards to determine what constitutes a subversive activity, such as we have for murder or larceny.” Jackson added:
Activities which seem benevolent or helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as ‘subversive’ by those whose property interests might be burdened thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as ‘subversive’ the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration. Some of our soundest constitutional doctrines were once punished as subversive. We must not forget that it was not so long ago that both the term ‘Republican’ and the term ‘Democrat’ were epithets with sinister meaning to denote persons of radical tendencies that were ‘subversive’ of the order of things then dominant.
It is clear Jackson’s warning was not heeded.
The sad reality is that there is no political consideration of historical analysis; of class analysis; of fascism itself, or even of real democracy — except to vilify the scapegoat du jour and calling for their removal as a means to restore this “security.” And in doing so, history repeats itself.
What is being avoided is a clear understanding of clandestine and covert acts conducted by our government. The various techniques used to gain control of the population will never be publicly disclosed and if so, those who do expose the truth will be vilified or mysteriously found dead. Racism, prejudices and fears of changing the status quo are so deeply embedded into our ruling class that there is a silent and tacit agreement to protect it at all costs.
Although the recent raids may be regarded as a way to bust unions, the truth is that under the auspices of “National security,” we see now a continuance of the long-running open warfare against Chicanos, African-Americans and Native Americans.
On Jan. 24, 2006, a Halliburton subsidiary received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide “temporary detention and processing capabilities.” The contract, announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR, calls for preparing for “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of other emergencies, such as “a natural disaster.” The release offered no details about where Halliburton will build these facilities, or when.
A Homeland Security spokesperson has responded that this is a “contingency contract” and that conceivably no centers might be built. To this day, the American people still know little or nothing about covert acts that have been used against us – the American public – because there are successful attempts to keep unclassified data out of the hands of the that public. This could, perhaps, be explained by an article in OMNI Magazine article (May 1987), which reported that former Assistant Defense Secretary and NSA deputy chief Donald C. Latham, under Regan, was the architect of National Security Decision Directive 145 (NSDD 145) which controlled the type of material that is permitted to be published to the public.
Under the approving gaze of the Reagan administration, Department of Defense (DoD) officials have quietly implemented a number of policies, decisions, and orders that give the military unprecedented control over both the content and public use of data and communications.
**The Pentagon has created a new category of “sensitive” but unclassified information that allows it to keep from public access huge quantities of data that were once widely accessible.
**Defense Department officials have attempted to rewrite key laws that spell out when the president can and cannot appropriate private communications facilities.
**The Pentagon has installed a system that enables it to seize control of the nation’s entire communications network – the phone system, data transmissions, and satellite transmissions of all kinds – in the event of what it deems a “national emergency.” As yet there is no single, universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes such a state. Usually such an emergency is restricted to times of natural disaster, war, or when national security is specifically threatened. Now the military has attempted to redefine emergency.
Now, under a plan called Endgame, jackbooted thugs of America’s ruthless new Special Forces Gestapo are aggressively hunting down and hauling off 400,000 Latinos “absconders” to detention camps.
… the National Council of La Raza and other civil and immigrant rights groups sued the Justice Department for adding the names of absconders to the National Crime Information Center database. Many police officers routinely access the database when running background checks on suspects and on people stopped for traffic violations.
The addition of absconders to the national criminal database was one of the first steps taken to toughen immigration laws after Sept. 11, 2001.
The plan is very reminiscent of Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 “readiness exercise” in 1984. The plan called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detains 400,000 imaginary “refugees,” in the context of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.
Ordering martial law under the guise of National Emergency is no problem for the White House. On July 5, 1987, an article written by Alfonzo Chardy in the Miami Herald revealed that in 1982, former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff, and Oliver North had drafted an executive order for continuity of government (COG). The order called for “suspension of the Constitution” and “declaration of martial law.” The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Mr. Giuffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff.
The plan was said to be similar to one Mr Giuffrida had developed earlier to combat “a national uprising by black militants”. It provided for the detention “of at least 21 million American Negroes” in “assembly centres or relocation camps”
Brinkerhoff is now with the Anser Institute for Homeland Security and, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he provided Bush and the Pentagon talking points for the constitutionality of applying martial law and suspending the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the law that is supposed to forbid use of troops for domestic law enforcement.
In 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 188, one of a series of directives that authorized continued planning for COG by a private parallel government. There is only one problem. It is unclear what Reagan’s exact plans are, because according to Congressman Jim McDermott (WA), Bush took the “unusual step of sealing the Reagan Presidential papers.”
What is clear is there are over 600 prison camps in the US and that they are operational and presently ready to receive detainees. It has been said that the camps are to be operated by FEMA should Martial Law ever be implemented in the US, but will it be FEMA who runs these camps, or our Leader’s dear Homeland Security?
In September 2005, NORTHCOM conducted its highly classified Granite Shadow exercise in Washington. It was reported that “Granite Shadow” is a top secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations inside the United States without civilian supervision or control.
Hitler had his brownshirts – his Gestapo – that scoured the country, rubbing out dissenters. And now, we have ours – and all under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency.”