It doesn't take long, does it. The ink isn't even dry and the persecution begins.
However, to be fair as one commentator pointed out, this happened BEFORE last weeks legislation. I for one, though, believe they go hand-in-hand in a larger trend.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Operation_Return_to_Sender_Stumbles_0928.html
Bella Maryanovsky, a thirty-year legal resident of the United States, was arrested last week on Tuesday, September 19, when she entered immigration offices for a routine update of her green card papers. It appears she was arrested under* a new immigration program called "Operation Return to Sender*."
She isn't "disappeared" we're reading about her. But this is scary, these people are deadly serious. It appears this woman was convicted of something in 1989 and now, after thirty years, they are deporting here. She's a "head-hunter" for corporations, has a good job, and contributes to society.
Michael Keegan, a spokesman for ICE in Washington, D.C. told RAW STORY in a phone conversation on Wednesday, "It is not our job to create the law. It is not our job to interpret the law. Our job is to enforce the law." According to Keegan, "the posture of law enforcement agencies has completely changed since 9/11."
This sounds very eerily to me like "we're just following orders"
According to Sedikov, thousands of immigrants are sitting in jails and detentions centers without any hope of what is called "relief from removal" - that is, cancellation of a charge that would otherwise result in deportation....
In the meantime, explains Sedikov, if the detainee is not held near an immigration court there is no mechanism by which they can be brought before an immigration judge to challenge their detention. The individual must simply wait until the right official in the right department of ICE decides it is time to bring them to court. Immigration courts do not have sheriffs who can bring detainees in, so judges will not entertain an attorney's request for a bond hearing unless the detainee is accessible. Thus, an individual put into detention falls into a sort of black hole. According to Sedikov, "ICE has no duty to respect [the attorney's] requests."...
...To make matters more disheartening, Maryanovsky takes medication for heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure. She confided to her family and friends that prison personnel mockingly refused to give her medication, telling her, "When you have a heart attack, then we'll help you."
One friend, Lauren, who wished to keep her last name private, said that she has visited Maryanovsky twice, and her ankles and extremities are swelling. "[She] can go into heart failure," Lauren told RAW STORY. According to family members, her blood pressure hit 220/110, and the family obtained a doctor's letter to present to immigration authorities, but she was still apparently not being given her medication....
So, according to this, thousands of immigrants are in a black hole with no way to appeal. There is no mention of them even being enemy combatants, yet witholding life saving medication and taunting someone with possible death is torture and crimes against humanity. This is happening in the US, in Florida, right now, as we speak.
Oh, and the irony at the end of the article, get this - she's a Ukranian Jew.
UPDATE: to answer the question what did she do...
The most likely reason Maryanovksy's file was flagged is that in 1989 she was convicted - wrongfully, according to her family - of committing a crime that at the time was not a deportable offense. Laws passed in the 1990's that applied retroactively, according to Keegan, would have made her offense a deportable one.
However, according to immigration expert Mark Levey, who has practiced immigration law in Washington, D.C. for twenty years, only crimes that were aggravated felonies at the time of commission were swept in under the retroactive rule. Thus, Levey believes that Maryanovsky's immigration file was probably flagged incorrectly.