Who Pays The Price Of Failed Immigration Enforcement

Erin Marie is with Amy Smith.

January 9 at 11:10 AM

We spent all day yesterday at the ICE detention center in Denver waiting to free a good friend. He has no criminal record nor any minor infractions of any kind.... In his life, and the 14 years he has lived in the states raising his son (who was born here) he has had zero interaction with the law. He is a beloved Community member and a family man. He has been actively working with a lawyer for years to update his legal status. There isn’t a hoop he hasn’t jumped through. In mid-December he went to the courthouse in telluride to pay his first and only speeding ticket. ICE was waiting outside, and after he paid his ticket, they threw him in an unmarked SUV and took him to the detention center in Denver where has has been imprisoned in sub-human conditions for three weeks.

The story of his imprisonment and the conditions he was subject to will stop you in your tracks. If you have a heart, even a small one, it will bring tears to your eyes. I can barely wrap my mind around the details. There are 1000 inmates spilling over in a facility that holds 600 at the maximum. The overflow is NOT due to the incarceration of rapists and drug dealers and criminals, but of hardworking family men, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers and mostly those (legally) asking for asylum. Sure, there are some criminals that have justly earned their way in. But you would be hard pressed to find even a few cases in which a wall would have quelled their entry.
Historically, ICE has focused their energy on apprehending people with some prior record or offense. Not so much nowadays. There has been a major shift in our own community, with numerous recent arrests, indicating that someone in a position of power within our little town is working very hard to target even those people with no record, wasting resources and lots and lots of $. My heart hurts knowing this.
And then to end the day watching a public temper tantrum of lies and fear-mongering, realizing that we are now personally, inextricably, woven into the web of this “manufactured crisis”...I’m so ashamed for my country.
But, I am grateful to know I will not be on the wrong side of history. I am grateful that my friend will see his family tomorrow. I am grateful that I know many brilliant, energetic people that will not stand for this wasteful, baseless ignorance. I am grateful for my privilege and the opportunity to bear witness to the truth. I am grateful that it will never be hate that calls me to action, but instead, overwhelming love.

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My response to the above: 
 
 
I speak as a retired US Border Patrol/ICE agent.  Ultimately our insidious system of immigration is about political profit, corporate profit from cheap labor and billions of US tax dollars poured into the US Border Enforcement Complex.



This enforcement fiasco - by design - will never stop or solve the problem and was never designed to do so. The political and financial elite who run all countries involved will continue to enrich themselves as long as their never-ending failed programs and failed political promises rule. 


Ironically Washington’s immigration argument swings back and forth.  “Let them all in” or “boot them all out” and “keep them all out” – all depending upon the administration du jour.  And yes, changes in immigration laws have been made. 


Yet overall - the madness goes on.  Greed runs the show and poverty is the result.  Poverty that exacerbates the flow of illegal immigration and illegal drugs into the US.  Meanwhile the elite running all countries involved keep getting richer while the good people on all sides of the border suffer the financial, emotional and life-threatening consequences.               


Your example exemplifies perfectly who pays the price.  The good people caught in the middle.  Those who want to better their lives and those of us who have compassion for those who try.