Homeland Security's Reign of Terror

Homeland Security's Reign of Terror!

Next March will mark the 56th anniversary of Anne Frank's death. Branded an illegal alien of the occupied Netherlands because she was Jewish; she and her young friends had to hide in fear of the black-shirted thugs known as the Protective Squad (Schutzstaffel) or SS as it was commonly called.

Roaming through neighborhoods they were the enforcers of cultural and ethnic purification. Their unspeakable atrocities against human beings in the name of the law still lacerate our sense of humanity. And while the ends of their sickening purposes still surface occasionally in places like the Sudan, Rwanda and Bosnia; their means continue to be used as weapons against targeted peoples and groups.

In Los Angeles, a young girl, 15 years of age (the same as Anne Frank when she died in the camps from typhus), is knocked to the floor, terrorized and forever scarred by fear as Federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents, dressed in black, wearing helmets of steel and think plastic, their bodies encased in leather and metal, bust in the door of her home, brandishing shotguns and automatic weapons.

Bleeding, sobbing hysterically, (like millions of Jewish children in the dark times, when the world ignored the means of national law enforcement); she watches as her father is beaten to the ground, hand-cuffed and shoved through the front-door. Her mother, screaming, crying, struggling, is tackled by big men, drug by her hair, she fights to get near her horror stricken daughter.

Child services takes her into "custody;" her parents are off to be concentrated in camps. For the crime of attempting to secure a decent life for their daughter; they will be branded as criminals against the state, threats to "the fatherland's (homeland) security," and deported.

In Grand Island, Nebraska, a single-mother, working at the Swift packing plant, in obvious pain from the plastic cuffs, screams to the crowd as she is pushed toward waiting ICE police buses with whited-out windows, for someone to please pick up her daughter from school. Meanwhile, a school bus driver, later that day, has to drop two toddlers off at a church because their parents were seized and failed to pick them up at the bus stop.

Gestapo-Like Raids Target Half a Million People

Gathering in front of the Federal Building in downtown San Diego on Friday, Aug. 22nd, representatives from a dozen community groups, held a news conference and rally as part of a "National Day of Action" across the country, demanding an "immediate moratorium on all raids, deportations, incarcerations and separation of families."

After years of brutal raids on workplaces, particularly in the mid-west, the ICE has begun to aim at poor neighborhoods; reminiscent of the Warsaw ghetto, with large numbers of ethnic targets. Federal agents, not unlike Himmler's thugs, troll rapid transit stations, markets, large apartment complex's and even schools and day care centers. In January, the black-shirts, terrorized Meadow Homes Elementary School children in Concord, California; by snatching parents as they picked up their kids.

Now, the ICE has announced plans to escalate its reign of terror, targeting 500,000 people who have no criminal record but are classified as "fugitives" because they are known to authorities and are still working and living in the United States. Instead of targeting real criminals and gang members or the rest of the estimated 12 million undocumented people in the U.S.; the world's newest goose-steppers, the ICE, has begun a multi-million dollar singling out against the most stable, hard-working emigrants as both a political statement (to effect the upcoming election) and as an economic move by corporate interests in the US seeking a new "bracero" (slave-labor) program.

Speaking to most major media outlets, Enrique Marones, director of Border Angels, spoke at the news conference about the tragedy and absurdity of widening a campaign of terror against "good hardworking families." He blasted ICE's acting Director of Detention and Removal Operations Jim Hayes' pledge to "arrest more this year than last" and even more next year as additional agents are hired.

Joining him at the press conference were representatives from Casa Refugio Elvira, Hermandad Mexicana, Familia Latina Unida, Sin Fronteras, Comite Latina Primeros Cien Dias, Gente Unida and Si Se Puede. Several U.S. citizens spoke about their being attacked by ICE because of their skin color. They all called for an immediate end to the persecution of immigrants, an end to the campaign of hunting down people like animals, forcing them from their jobs and homes, "hounded at every turn and forced to live in the shadows."

The community representatives were cordoned off by a dozen San Diego police officers, as the Mexi-phobes and racists Xenophobes , shouted their usual crap about "go home" and "you don't belong here." Waving their flags and wallowing in the shallow fear of having to share this great land – as their immigrant forbearers did – the climate of discriminatory and unjust social bonds, experienced by many groups (blacks, Chinese, the Irish, etc.) in our history, repeated itself, once again, Friday, in the shadow of the Federal Building.

These self-appointed citizen goons, like Klansmen before them, claim that all they want is to inforce the "law" regardless of whether it is fair, protective or advances human social needs. Yet, they have never decried that not one single CEO, Human Resources Director, factory manager or foreman has ever been detained, arrested, or deported for breaking "the law" in their hiring practices. Labor, not the corporate autocrat, are hunted and attacked for a reason.
Support for San Diego's Bakery Worker

On Thursday, Aug 21, the evening before the downtown rally, about 50 community residents came together at a forum on immigration issues at the City Heights Community Center to hear two workers from the French Gourmet Bakery in Pacific Beach tell about their day of terror when ICE agents swarmed their workplace.

Patricia Olvera's first impulse was to run when she saw heavily armed men bust into the restaurant. Surrounding the building, blocking the exits; the black-clad, leathered down brutes began shoving people and shouting . All Olvera could think about was her 2 kids in school; their safety, fear pumping the adrenalin, she never made the door. Brutally attacked, slammed against a wall, she was hand-cuffed and "patted-down" by large male hands. No female agents were present.

During the May 2nd, 2008, raid eighteen Bakery workers were seized and taken away to a detention centers despite the fact ICE had not a single arrest warrant. Olvera was eventually released, but lives in day-by-day fear. "I have anger toward all of this," she told the forum attendees, "I don't know what's going to happen to me or my children, they haven't even given me a court date." She talked of her personal humiliation, being treated as a criminal, locked-up, the ways it has changed her life, making her kids suffer. "They kill your dreams," she said.

Also, caught up in ICE's San Diego day of terror was UCSD student Jorge Narvaez. A part-time baker at the restaurant and a legal, permanent citizen; Narvaez, who's mother was deported last year, stood up against the raid, arguing for his rights. He told the forum that as an ethics studies major, hoping to become an immigration attorney, he wants to "help people and use the law to bring my mother home."

Yet, in keeping with the Gestapo nature of ICE operations; the local San Diego black-shirts retaliated against Narvaez the very next morning. Even though they had interrogated him the previous day and validated his papers, 6 armed agents surrounded his apartment on the UCSD campus and searched all his personal stuff (without a warrant), destroying part of his daughter's room. He trembled in fear that his family would return and be subjected to the wrath of these storm troopers. "I felt so vulnerable, so helpless; I was afraid they would take my papers away from me," he told the forum.

Amnesty Will Help All U.S. Workers

Justin Akers, a professor at San Diego City College, also addressed the forum. He outlined the history of the United States' "war on immigrant workers." He spoke of the growing public movement to expose the terrorism occurring in local communities which has "impacted thousands of lives, broken families and literally shut down entire towns."

While he mentioned the "deep roots of anti-Mexican racism," Akers suggested that the police state persecution of immigrants was more about "a means of controlling people." He pointed out that immigrant workers are the fastest growing segment of union efforts in the country and that most ICE raids have occurred at factories and packing facilities that are in the process of being unionized. Five of the six Swift & Company meat packing plants raided in December 2006, netting over 1,300 workers, were represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). The sixth was in the process of becoming unionized.

While the use of Federal troops for union busting goes back to the 19th Century in the U.S. it has never occurred on such a scale or as part of an over-all specific strategy against a minority group by powerful interests. Across the board from the militarized nature of law enforcement to the courts; an actual conspiracy against labor exists, not just migrant workers. Injunctions against the raids are routinely turned down, while union lawyers are denied access to arrested workers.

Corporate oligarchs fear a growing Latino union movement, with their cultural strengths of familial and community bonds, its solid sense of solidarity: influencing large, staid, self-interest driven unions. And, as New America Media associate editor, David Bacon, points out, these brutal raids and persecutions in immigrant communities have one fundamental political purpose to create a vast exploitable, cheap labor pool of close to 600,000 "guest workers."

Beginning in 1942, a similar program recruited temporary immigrants who were exploited, cheated and deported if they tried to organize a union, go on strike or advocate for decent wages or living conditions. Like China's rural slave labor, transported to the city to live in squalid conditions and work in dangerous environments, the "Bracero" program allowed employers to drive down wages against U.S. workers, and was finally ended in 1964 after Ceasar Chavez and other Latino organizers fought it.

As researchers for Project Censored announced in their 2008 study announced, "the demand for undocumentated labor in the US economy is structural." With the de-unionization of the workplace and heavy emphasis on subcontracting, which shields large employers against worker protections and responsibilities, immigrant workers have become a necessary component of US competitiveness in a world market.

At the Aug. 21st forum in City Heights, Carlos Pelayo, a local organizer for the United Domestic Workers of America, spoke of the efforts of corporate employers to create a two-tier caste system, where millions of people are denied decent wages, social benefits and fundamental rights. He urged community residents to begin thinking beyond "ethnicity" to a general worker consciousness.

Empire builders, national politicians and corporate CEO's have decided that the much of the world is too unstable for their interests; as Hugo Chavez and other courageous Latin American leaders have demonstrated. They need to re-create Empire by bringing the locked-down, oppressed laborers here, herding them into locked-down work environments, similar to prisons; threatened by legal authorities with guns and deportation.

Aiding this effort are several dozen new corporate demanded trade treaties [including the recent ones with Columbia, Panama, Peru and South Korea] which will decimate the countryside of these countries. Like NAFTA, which overwhelmed Mexico with cheap subsidized agricultural products, causing the loss of 1.6 million jobs between 2005 and 2005, new treaties will displace many more million desperate people clamoring for any kind of a job.

What We Can Do!

Over and over again, panelists at the August forum stressed that the recent obscene military-style actions against immigrants was "just the beginning." Rumors of giant concentration camps being built on the border by Homeland Security czar, Michael Chertoff, are circulating. Other reports, say his almost dictatorial powers are growing. Under a program known as 287(g) he can assign junior vigilantes to the war against immigrants.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, the world's worst Mexi-phobic, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, not only has a staggering 160 officers focusing on immigration control but has sworn-in a 3,000 member, armed, racist "posse" They have their own airplanes (about 30), jeeps, motorcycles and buses. It is a virtual right-wing militia one might see in violent places like Columbia or Pakistan.

All brown-skinned people are targeted; Latinos must run a gauntlet of stops and roadblocks just to go about their daily business. Thousands of outstanding criminal warrants are ignored, while gangs proliferate; while Sheriff "Nero" fiddles away, busting immigrants. Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix has decried his tactics, saying the Sheriff's raids and personal vendetta is interfering with city police officers and their undercover duties. The mayor of Guadalupe denounced him and said he is not welcome in her community. Yet, the Feds continue to finance the Sheriff's persecutions.

As the ICE gears up to launch a massive invasion of immigrant communities, vowing to put over a half-million people in concentration camps; it is time for all of us to take action. Every raid devalues our social capital and makes a mockery of our supposed nation built on civil liberties and justice. Every youth terrorized by Gestapo tactics or orphaned by deportation creates a wounded child, who will carry the scars and anger into the streets. Every mass arrest gives lie to equal justice, as employers are protected, while employees are oppressed and the wages of us all continue to be depressed.

Participants at the August forum, as well as representatives of community organizations at the press conference, the following day, all challenged citizens to respond to these assaults on human, civil and worker rights, by:

• Calling for an immediate moratorium on all raids, deportations and fugitive labeling. Diverse individuals, from the Bishop of Rhode Island to the Congressional Latino Caucus, to groups, such as the AFL-CIO and the Southern Poverty Law Center, have all called on an immediate end to ICE's campaign of terror.

• Tell both major nominees for President that only a immigrant reform policy that includes amnesty is acceptable.

• Pressure Congress to oppose corporate America's scheme to import a new generation of slave labor to our shores through a bogus "guest" worker program.

• And, most importantly, support local victims of the war against immigrants both financially and organizationally.

In San Diego a committee has been formed to support the workers victimized by the ICE raids at the French Gourmet Bakery. Stating that "these workers are members of our community who have lived in the US many years, raised families and contribute positively to our society," the committee proclaims "they deserve to be free, to remain united with their families, and to have access to full citizenship rights."

A fund-raiser for the bakers is planned for Saturday, Sept. 6th at 5 p.m. To be held at the Cultural de La Raza building at 2125 Park Blvd., will feature speakers, solidarity and, of course, bread!

Rocky Neptun is the volunteer director of the San Diego Renters Union.