Family Values
A few weeks ago, I participated in a Federalist Society debate at Cornell regarding the immigration issue. One of the things that came up was family separation. My opponent was confident that, even with more rigorous immigration enforcement, the government would not seek to separate illegal immigrant parents from their (US Citizen) children. Today, the Des Moines Register gives us this heartwarming holiday story: (Hat Tip: Firedoglake)
Marshalltown, Ia. — A priest’s and nun’s mission to find the mother of
a nursing baby was thwarted today after they said officials from Camp
Dodge would not let them inside to tell their story.
Sister
Christine Feagan, from the St. Mary’s Hispanic Ministry, and The Rev.
Jim Miller, who is a priest from the St. Mary’s Parish, both said they
drove to Camp Dodge this afternoon to find out the status of a nursing
mother who was deported and nursing a baby. They were also seeking a
father with an ashmatic child. They didn’t come with papers showing legal status. Instead, they wanted “to show them the need to be free,” said Miller.
Miller
said he knows detainees were located there, because they were permitted
a phone call from Camp Dodge and some had called the church seeking
help. He said an ICE officer at the facility “wouldn’t tell us anything about anybody.” The
duo returned to Marshalltown this afternoon to deal with the scores of
families trying arrange care for children whose parents have been
detained. At the church’s Hispanic ministry, the baby whose
mother was arrested was passed among staff and a community activist who
had agreed to help care for her. They said they don’t know when the girl, whose father is absent, will be reunited with her mother.
The
child, whose name was not provided by ministry staff, cried little, and
stared at the different faces visiting the ministry. Women speaking a
mixture of Spanish and English coordinated plans with how they would
take care of children left behind. Carmen Montealegre is one of
the women who is taking care of two of her friends’ children with
family displaced by the arrests. One of the children, a seven-year-old,
asks frequently why her mother was detained, she said.
“She asked me three times, ‘Did she kill someone?’ I said, ‘She was working under another name.’” The baby left behind has her own problems. She has been difficult to feed since her mother was arrested, Feagan said. “The
mother was breastfeeding the baby,” Feagan said. “The baby doesn’t want
to eat. Another tried to breastfeed, but she knew it wasn’t her.” Feagan
said she and advocates for local Hispanic families have tried to
pinpoint exactly how many children are in family-limbo to try to
organize help.
A total of 408 students were absent in the
Marshalltown community school district as of Wednesday morning,
district officials reported.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer had a good segment on the raid of Swift & Company last night with similarly disturbing stories. A transcript can be found here
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/july-dec06/immigration_12-13.html
The whole business is bewildering for a number of reasons. For one, Swift was participating in Basic Pilot, the Department of Homeland Security program to authenticate documentation the workers presented to the company to verify their legal status. The New York Times reported: “The news sent shudders through the nation’s businesses because Swift & Company, the world’s second largest processor of fresh beef and pork, had tried to weed out illegal workers and had relied on a federal program designed to help employers detect fake identity documents. Mr. Chertoff acknowledged that the program, known as Basic Pilot, is unable to detect authentic identity documents that have been stolen.”
Of course, what’s worse (perhaps) than the indifference to human suffering this kind of thing involves is the intense anger many Americans seem to feel. It’s often voiced as an economic concern about illegal immigrants getting jobs and government benefits at the expense of taxpaying citizens, but I sense it is often more of a gut reaction than a rational economic concern.
There is a lot wrong with our immigration policies, both the substance of those policies and their enforcement. The anger that you encounter from ordinary Americans may be economic, but it also may be the sense that there are many laws that they themselves would just as soon not have to bear, and that whatever the solution to our blinkered immigration situation might be, passing and then ignoring laws is not it. It’s bad for the rule of law and the maintenance of a civil society. Situations such as this put them in a very conflicted place: sure, they feel sympathy, I certainly do, but what are laws for?
From any reasonable interpretation of Ctolic Social Thought, the ICE raids on the Swift Compny plants and their consequences are simply intolerable. My wife and I were with some Catholic friends, Democrats and Republicans, and all of us were appalled. How can our government do things like this to families and their little children and not have every serious Catholic, laymen and clergy, denounce the action. Let’s not talk rubbish about these workers breaking laws that have been so haphazardly enacted and enforced when this outrage perpetrated by the federal government is so silently put up with.
In most agencies, hospitals, nursing home etc., when there is not an objective eye watching, abuses happen often.
This is why anyone who has a loved one, or someone they can act responsibly for in such a situation, should be gently vigilant that adequate care is given.
No question there are countless caring caregivers, even in law enforcement. But there is always the possibility that one of the workers from whatever competency just does not give a damn about the subjected person.
This is why patient advocates etc exist.
So thanks for posting it Eduardo. This is our sister or brother who needs our advocacy.
You cannot govern a large country or make effective decisions based on anecdotes. EVERY issue has its victims, its tragic side, its wrenching stories. The anger that law-abiding Americans feel is fully justified. I am especially angry at the church for supporting illegal immigration because it helps swell the ranks of poor Catholics (do not tell me that the church ‘cares’ about the immigrants; the church revealed its true nature in covering up the priest sex scandals … the church does what it does to protect its own power and position, and that power is certainly enhanced by the presence of more and more Catholics–whether here legally or not)
Meanwhile on the northern border the machinations of Homeland Security grow bolder and bolder. According to this article in the Toronto Star they are preventing that icon of “family values”, the lunch bag, from crossing the border.
“Lunch bags are now on the list of items that have to be declared at the United States border.
Whether it’s a sandwich, a can of soup or a piece of fruit, truckers who regularly travel across the Canada-U.S. border are finding that packing a lunch can be risky business.
If they don’t declare precisely the contents within their lunch bag, they may be looking at a hefty fine, reports the Niagara Falls Review.
Drivers say they’ve been fined, detained and threatened with confiscation of their U.S. issued identity cards for trying to enter the U.S. with undeclared food.
A member of the Ontario Trucking Association says the lunch-bag crackdown is another addition to close to 10 new U.S. security measures aimed at stopping terrorists, smuggling and threats to the food supply.”
Robert, allow me to make two points.
First, The Secretary of Homeland Defense explicitly said that the actions at the Swift company plants would be followed by other actions of the same sort, explicitly designed to intimidate illegal workers. You are incorrect to characterize what happened at Swift as anecdotal. It is apparently a matter of policy.
Second, even “anecdotal” outrages ought to be called by their right name. Any time one rips apart a family for anything but a grievous and ongoing threatening condition it is at least suspect. The burden of proof rests on anyone who would defend this disruption. That it is not a common occurrence does not diminish its wrongfulness.
Let me say that I think actions like this are counterproductive and not really part of a sustainable immigration and enforcement policy. But to say that there is something uniquely awful about this is silly, forgive me. This is the tenor of much of our criminal justice system — for instance the haphazard not to say discriminatory enforcement of drug laws that carry so-called mandatory minimums that disrupt family relationships and hurt people, particularly children. And for what it’s worth, there are many people who risk deportation in order to normalize or maintain immigrant status by, for instance, applying for asylum. I work with some of them and it’s pretty d**ned wrenching to lay your life out for an immigration officer who has the power to deport you. I know I am being hard hearted but if there is one thing that I consider to be inimical to good and just results, it is the pursuit of policy in reaction to the tug of heartstrings. Certainly, I agree that families should not be separated but whether you have a newborn should not be the deciding factor in whether you are deported.
Barbara,
Please let me refer you to today’s (Saturday, DEc. 16) NY Times, page A11.
Note that some of the people picked up in this dragnet had done nothing more wrong than not have the evidence of their legal status with them at work.
Note further that apparently some of the people arrested were transported to some detention facility without having an opportunity to get legal advice, bail, etc.
Note, further, that none of the people detained have been charged with threatening public safety. They were simply at work. They certainly did not endanger their children. The law enforcement action itself did the endangering.
Note, finally, the remarks of Mr. Wiseman, Swift’s general counsel. It seems clear that some less drastic measures could have been used by the law enforcement officials.
If, as you suggest, one should neither be surprised by the use of such procedures nor find them at variance with usual law enforcement practices, then there is surely reason to object to the legal system that permits them. Perhaps you are right that nothing out of the ordinary occurred in this instance. But then one can certainly object that this “business as usual” legal practice is at best of highly dubious moral propriety. Civil disobedience to challenge it is not obviously unreasonable.
But then, perhaps, my criticisms can be written off as mere sentimental blather! Sentimentlity is not a trait that acquaintances usually associate me with. But who knows? As we age….
For the third time, I don’t approve of the tactics used at the plant, or for that matter, current immigration enforcement strategy and implementation generally. But the focus of the post was on the separation of a mother from her child not the details on why the law enforcement tactics are discriminatory and a waste of time. I can argue the latter as well as anybody since I actually work with immigrants from time to time. But you will never get me to abandon a principled position because you can point to sad anecdotes.