Immigrant Hysteria: Update

I've been trying to find some information on the story about which Spudsy posted yesterday, and it's hard to come by, let me tell you.

Redd Turtle pointed to this story which includes the ominous passage: "Lawyers for the United Food and Commercial Workers filed papers in federal court in Denver yesterday saying that the arrests of the Greeley workers violated their constitutional rights. The filing says that those arrested are being denied access to lawyers and that their whereabouts are unknown."

I also found this story out of Dallas which begins with a scarily honest lede: "Stymied by Congress and a divided public, federal authorities are launching a new assault on illegal immigration: accusing workers of hijacking the identities of unwitting U.S. citizens." Who needs immigration laws and public support when you've got stormtroopers and secret detention centers?

Tuesday's raid, which was "the government's single-largest worksite-enforcement operation ever" and has completely torn apart families and towns, seems to be in large part a way of blackmailing Congress into passing legislation the administration wants.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used Tuesday's action to call once again for congressional action to overhaul immigration-enforcement tools. At the same time, he said, Operation Wagon Train – as the 10-month investigation was known – should serve as a deterrent to illegal immigrants.

"I'm pretty much going to guarantee you we're going to keep bringing these cases," Mr. Chertoff told reporters. "We're going to try to make it inhospitable to break the law here."

It's a very dangerous game the administration is playing. Swift & Co., whose plants in six states were raided Tuesday, is the US' #3 beef processor. Like our produce industry, America's meat industry is heavily dependent on exploiting illegal workers. That's the deal with the devil we made to keep our food costs so low, and now the administration wants to undo that deal to satiate its hysterically anti-immigrant base—but they don't seem to realize or care that you can't break that sort of bargain without the devil getting his due. Rid the American food industries of illegal workers and food costs skyrocket. And then so do the poverty levels.

Which is maybe the whole idea—creating a class of Americans willing to work for slave wages to replace the Mexican and Central- and South American workers we're disappearing from our workforce.