Ire and ICE

Le estan diciendo que: "You're under arrest"?

As you may know, I write relatively often about illegal immigration. Increasingly, in fact, given the, uh, "increasing" nature of the problem. But today, I get the distinct and rare joy to report that at least of few of these freeloaders got their comeuppance. Kind of.

In order to understand, though, you may need a little background. Read on... Nowadays, it's a common practice in any U.S. city you care to name for illegal immigrants to gather every morning at convenience stores like 7-Eleven and others. Their goal: To solicit cash day-work from the throngs of van-driving contractors who file into such places for a cuppa Joe or a doughnut on their way to their jobsites...

However, a group of two dozen illegals in Baltimore got more than they bargained for when they propositioned the unmarked vehicles of a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents!

The ensuing bust netted the agency:
* 6 men with U.S. criminal records - even though they aren't even citizens
* 8 who were in violation of "final removal orders" from immigration judges
* 1 that had been caught crossing the border FOUR TIMES.

How many of these men will be given paying work details in prison (at around a buck a day) remains to be seen. It should be all of them, but I'm betting it ends up being ZERO. Why? Because already, at least one immigrant advocacy group has started raising a stink about how the agents involved in the bust somehow unfairly targeted Hispanics - even though the bust-ees solicited the officers! All of the arrested men were Mexican, Honduran and Salvadoran (with one Peruvian in the mix).

The group, calling itself CASA, has declared the raid "illegal" in a press conference held at the 7-Eleven store where the bust took place. The fact that! no actu al ATTORNEYS appear to have made this claim on the group's behalf seemed unimportant to the newspapers reporting the story.

Of course, the newly-elected Mayor of Baltimore (Democrat Sheila Dixon) - instead of openly applauding the bust as a long-overdue first baby-step in controlling Baltimore's rampant illegal immigration problem - is using the incident to highlight what she calls the need for a "designated day-laborer center" in the city, according to a Washington Times article on the arrests...

Why doesn't she just come out and say what she means: That illegal immigrants should have a way to access all the benefits of being American - work, wages, entitlements, and equal protection of the law - without having to make any of the sacrifices? Like paying taxes, learning the English language, and abiding by the law.

Fittingly, the spontaneous bust came on the same day that ICE announced more than 750 arrests of illegals over a one-week span in Los Angeles. The Times article also cites the fact that the ICE removed more than 190,000 illegal aliens in 2006 - with 45% (90,000) of these having U.S. CRIMINAL RECORDS...

Now that's what I call a good start.
Reporting on deporting,
William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.