Speaking of ICE, they've been busy lately. Orders have come down from the Bush White House to "get tough" with immigrants and ICE has jumped to comply. In a "major sweep" in California they arrested some 900 illegal immigrants, and in Iowa another operation netted 270. The California crowd my have had it easy.
Brian DeMore, acting director of the federal Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Los Angeles, said agents took into custody any person they encountered during an arrest who had violated immigration laws. Agents set out with a target list of just over 1,500 “fugitive aliens,” Mr. DeMore said, referring to people who have ignored orders to leave the country.
In addition to the 495 of those found, 410 people were taken into custody on charges of violating immigration laws, he said. Other violations included returning after being deported, overstaying a visa, or living in the country without any legal documentation, Ms. Mack said. Over half of all arrested this month have been deported.
(emphasis added)
In Iowa, Bush ordered ICE to throw the book at illegal immigrants - they're not getting deported, they're going to prison.
WATERLOO, Iowa — In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.
The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.
Either because he's trying to get a little credibility for his Admin from the Pubs' anti-immigrant base or because he's trying to make more work for private prison builders and managers (who gave mucho dinero to his campaign coffers), Bush has had a very Bush-like spasm: he's going to right his sinking ship by picking on somebody weaker than he is.
It may backfire on him, though. His new get-tough prison policy hasn't seemed to have impressed the GOP, which continues to run hell-for-leather away from him on all fronts. Except for such poison fruit as Tom Tancredo and James Inhofe, it's unlikely to get him much credit. The Bush Legacy is too well set for a few last-minute arrests to make a dent in its overall awfulness.
Probably this is just another standard Bush Response: when things aren't going well, pick on somebody smaller than you that nobody really cares about and pummel them to your heart's content. It always makes a bully feel bigger when he beats up a little kid. Power, that's where it's at.
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