Earlier today, I posted on my Facebook page a link to a story in today's New York Times about how a number of American citizens have been wrongfully detained by immigration enforcement. Some of them are naturalized citizens, and some are natural-born, native Americans who happen to have non-Anglo Saxon names. The fact that this is happening in America should scare the hell out of anyone who prides herself or himself on living in the "land of the free."
The quote that jumped out at me, and which I pulled out in my Facebook post, was this:
"United States citizens can also be tagged in a Secure Communities fingerprint check because of flukes in the department’s databases. Unlike the federal criminal databases administered by the F.B.I., Homeland Security records include all immigration transactions, not just violations. An immigrant who has always maintained legal status, including those who naturalized to become American citizens, can still trigger a fingerprint match."
I have dear friends, past and former co-workers and classmates and family members who fall into that category: "has always maintained legal status, including those who naturalized to become American citizens." Apparently, any one of them could potentially be swept up and confined to an ICE detention facility for days at a time, and maybe even deported. Not because they're skirting the system, but because they did everything right - got their green cards, became citizens. Not because DHS honestly (no matter how erroneously) believes the woman who came over from Germany to finish high school back in the 50s (hi, Irma!) might be a threat. But because DHS has a sh*tty filing system.
Ok, imagine this: You bought a handgun. Lots of criminals and dangerous people have handguns, but you're not one of them. You bought yours legally after the required waiting period, and you have all the right paperwork. But, when you get pulled over for speeding and the officer spots the totally legal handgun in your car, you get arrested - excuse me, "detained" - anyway, just because you MIGHT be one of those bad gun-owning guys after all.
Of course the difference is that, if for some reason a handgun owner who gets caught without the right paperwork gets taken down to the station, that person gets to call his or her lawyer and then go home. That guy who was born in L.A. who gets arrested for shoplifting a $10 bottle of perfume gets sent to an ICE jail for days without any contact with the outside world, and it takes an ACLU suit to get the government to LOOK AT ITS OWN RECORDS and get him out.
Let's talk about the shoplifting. The people in the Times story entered the system in the first place because they were arrested on minor criminal charges. So a lot of the people commenting on the article wrote some version of "they were breaking the law, so they deserved what they got." Except, no, unless the U.S. suddenly just turned into Stalinist Russia. In America, we don't imprison people for days at a time on suspicion that they committed a crime, and we sure as hell don't deport them. We have something called due process. (Oh look, Tea Party! It's that Bill of Rights y'all love so much!) That means that the guy who shoplifted the perfume spends the night in jail, is arraigned the next day, gets a fine and/or a court date, etc., etc. He does NOT get lost in a federal rabbit warren even after the judge in his case has ordered his release.
And the people who are arguing otherwise are guilty of the "You did something wrong, then something bad happened to you; I'm not doing that wrong thing, and therefore nothing bad will ever happen to me" fallacy... or worse. If that line of reasoning is appealing to you, I'd like to remind you that the people in this story are American citizens, just like you. I hope you never look suspiciously Canadian to the wrong federal agent.
This is an entirely separate issue from the discussion of how our country handles people who are here in this country illegally. This administration has found and deported over 1 million of them, more than any previous administration. The policy is a major strategy in the "war on terror," even though most of the people involved are not dangerous, just people who've overstayed their visas. But we have these laws for a reason and we need to enforce them. I sincerely hope that the administration figures out a way to do so without violating the civil rights of actual Americans.
(Seriously, have they never heard of Excel? I'm just saying, if your average college development office can tell in five seconds how many geology majors with lifetime giving of over $1,000 live in a particular ZIP code, you'd think the Department of Homeland Security could find a way to ID people who are only in its system because they took the time to follow the rules and get naturalized.)
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