I can't believe the minutemen are coming to San Rafael. I've always thought of them as remote fringe weirdoes posting themselves on the desolate border. Those weirdoes are coming to my town today to vent their severely shortsighted views on immigration. We have a very large immigrant community here in the largest city in Marin County - it seems every service you can imagine is packed into this industrious place. Immigrants live in the canal, a neighborhood of small homes, apartment houses and occasional taqueria and carnesaria.
So the minutemen are demonstrating against undocumented immigration in San Rafael today. Unfortunately, my neighbors, the workers I interact with, students, their mothers and fathers are all badly impacted by this group's actions and the ICE raids that drew headlines along with marches here this past month. School officials accompanied children home on busses to make sure an adult would be on the other end of the route - and not in a deportment center.
Now with the advent of Congressional oversight from the Democrats, the Iraq War is no longer the slush fund it once was for the likes of Halliburton and other profiteers, they move on to immigration. Last year, Halliburton signed a deal to provide over $350 million in 'detention centers' vaguely "for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space" [New programs? A spokeswoman went on to say 'that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise... 'It's the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration,' Ms. Zuieback said."]. I hope there is no sinister private interest working to populate these centers with hard working albeit undocumented workers and their families. It's too easy to see how these scrambling profiteers could use immigrants as a straw man with which to bait xenophobes like the minutemen into doing their bidding.
I don't have a solution to offer. I believe we are long overdue to pass reforms dealing with the reality of immigration from Mexico and Latin America. The cost of inaction is continued misuse of a whole population of people who have done nothing wrong save arrive without paperwork. This is a question of human rights and dignity, not economic prerogative and cultural heritage. These are real people with families; children with parents on whom they depend. They should not be 'returned to sender' like so many misplaced packages of goods. These are people.
Bay Area religious leaders did the right thing by coming to San Rafael yesterday to decry the past month's ICE raids. These raids have scared residents and swept up others not initially targeted. The tactics have been criticized by local and county politicians as detrimental to the community, yet ICE has it's marching orders, as disruptive and frightening as their tactics remain.
I do feel badly for the minutemen, too; they have been manipulated to do the bidding of corporate profiteers and reckless politicians. They should work instead to bring about sensible reforms, not to frighten my neighbors. Mostly I'm saddened that a group would seek to whip up hostility in my city, to divide people for one another, and to act as if we are not all the same. It's a bright sunny day, and I'm dreading it.