In the surreal socio-political landscape that has become the United States since the Bush Administration took and began to abuse power comes another strange, surreal (and sad) story. This one comes from New Bedford, Massachusetts, a working class, somewhat impoverished fishing community on the Bay State's south coast.
More below the fold.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) raided a manufactuing plant yesterday in New Bedford. The leather goods company has millions of dollars of contracts with the U.S. government to make supplies for our soldiers in Iraq. The plant has been called a modern day sweatshop: long work days; poor working conditions; low pay; and, oh yes, illegal immigrants providing the exploited labor force.
Here's a video news story about yesterday's raid. (if the video does not play, then scroll to "Boston" and click on the story that is titled "Hundreds Detained in New Bedford raid", then it should play). What I find so heartbreaking is that of the hundreds of arrested and detained workers many were women with small children. ICE has reported that it has released 45 previously detained women who have said they have small children left in New Bedford when their parents were carted off to Fort Devens; however, many more women are too afraid to tell ICE that they are mothers for fear that their children (now in either Dept. of Social Service custody or being temporarily taken care of by members of the community including the local Catholic church where many of the illegal immigrants celebrated mass) will be permanently taken from them.
And so the tough-on-crime Republican Party government that we have "leading" us--although a government that is stubbornly soft on crime when it comes to passing a federal hate crimes law--the same government that prizes itself on family values has not detained hundreds of Latino gang members; rather, it has detained hard-working people, and in doing so it has split up scores of families.
One with a conscious, with a heart, with a soul might ask, should ICE have any responsibility when planning a hundred-persons raid on a illegal alien staffed sweatshop to the children of the workers detained? Might they have planned to keep the families together as it detained the illegal immigrants? Or should ICE follow the lead of FEMA, which stood by and did little to help the Gulf Coast victims of hurricaine Katrina, and simply raise a middle finger to the children whose parents ICE detained?