A Good Start, But Not Enough

=========
=========
Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
=========
=========

Some good news on the illegal immigration front: at least some enforcement efforts are being made, though they are not enough.

Advertisement

ICE raids on Mississippi food processing plants result in 680 arrests

Aproximately 680 “removable aliens” in what a federal prosecutor described as “the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation’s history.”

Nearly 600 ICE agents swarmed the plants in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol, surrounding the perimeters to keep workers from fleeing.

“The execution of federal search warrants today was simply about enforcing the rule of law in our state and throughout our great country,” U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst said in a statement. ” I commend these federal agents, our state and local law enforcement partners, and our federal prosecutors for their professionalism and dedication to ensure that those who violate our laws are held accountable.”

Hopefully, everyone involved in running the plants will see civil and even criminal penalties if it can be shown that they did not do their due diligence to make sure the workers were authorized to work. And it should be noted that anyone not illegal was let go.

CNN tweeted:

Advertisement

Well, if he’s in the United States illegally, then yes, he is a criminal. If he is here illegally, and was working at a chicken processing plant, he was either being paid cash under the table, or had provided false documents to pay payroll and income taxes. Both of those are felonies.

Of course, the factory owners and managers need to be arrested, too, if they were in on this fraud. If convicted, they need to be thrown in prison for the maximum sentence allowable under the law; with consecutive sentencing, that could be for the rest of their miserable lives. That’s the kind of deterrent we need.

Then the government needs to come up with an amnesty program: any manager at any facility who has allowed these kinds of immigration violations to occur should have thirty days to come forward, and tell ICE what has been done, and then he gets off with a felony conviction, a fine but a suspended sentence. After that thirty days is up, that’s it, no more Mr Nice Guy, you get caught aiding and abetting illegal immigration and you go to jail, for the maximum allowable sentence.

Fighting illegal immigration has to include eliminating the incentives to come here illegally; making it impossible for illegals to find work is one of the best things we could do.

William Teach noted that The Washington Post, among others, is playing up the sob story angle:

Advertisement

ICE arrested hundreds of people in raids. Now ‘devastated’ children are without their parents.

By Angela Fritz and Luis Velarde | August 8, 2019 | 6:09 AM

Elizabeth Iraheta was passing the Koch Foods processing plant in Morton, Miss., on Wednesday when she saw immigration officials swarming outside and a helicopter overhead. Big silver buses lined the driveway and agents blocked the entrance gates.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were sweeping through the workplace and rounding up all undocumented immigrants. By the day’s end, nearly 700 people would be arrested.

Angie’s mother was one of them.

Friends of Angie’s mother brought the 12-year-old girl to the food-processing plant to say goodbye before agents loaded her onto a bus with dozens of other immigrants. Angie is teary-eyed in a video of an encounter with an ICE agent but also seems confused about what was going to happen next.

“The girl is devastated for her mom,” Iraheta, 49, said. “We still don’t know if she will be released. The girl is in bad shape, very sad. We’re waiting for her mom.”

Lets be honest here: anyone who has children and is arrested for a crime is going to cause a devastating separation from that child. That’s the reality of law enforcement. Should we not arrest an accused murderer or rapist or armed robber because his children might be left alone? Yet the credentialed media are going to be pushing these sob stories to try to hinder immigration law enforcement.

Advertisement

Sadly, Angie is going to be reunited with her mother, on American soil:

“Here’s the deal, all right,” an agent says to an English-speaking woman accompanying Angie. “She just went. Her mom got on the bus. We took her mom’s documents, all right. She’s going to be processed, because she doesn’t have papers to be here legally.”

But “because she’s the only caretaker of the child,” the agent continues, “she’ll be released this afternoon. So with [Angie] being a U.S. citizen and being 12 years old … she’s going to be issued a notice to appear, she’ll have to see an immigration judge, she’ll be released this afternoon.”

“Today?” a woman asks.

“Yes, yes,” the officer responds. “But I’m going to tell you something, she’s not going to be deported because she has a United States citizen child.”

This is where the program is a failure. Angie, it seems, is an ‘anchor baby,’ a child an illegal immigrant had in the United States, and we’re going to allow her illegal immigrant mother to stay here as well. Sorry, but that’s just wrong: either the child should be given to the care of a family member or guardian who is here legally, or put into foster care, or head to her mother’s home country as her mother is deported. We have to be [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to enforce immigration law, because if we are not, it just creates more incentive to have those anchor babies.

Advertisement

We cannot ever hope to fight illegal immigration successfully unless we eliminate every incentive for it. We must eliminate their employment opportunities and we must remove the incentive for having ‘anchor babies.’ If they cannot get jobs, and if mothers know that they will be separated from their children, it will do a lot to help solve the problem.
__________________________________________
Please visit my Red State story archive for more of my articles.
My personal website, The First Street Journal, includes articles not necessarily in Red State’s paradigm.
You can follow me on Twitter.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos