On August 25, 2008 federal agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, raided the Howard Industries transformer plant in Laurel, Mississippi. Almost 600 suspected undocumented workers (read: Latino) were separated from their white and black co-workers, and 475 were taken to a detention center 200 miles away in Jena, Louisiana (I won’t even get into the irony of that choice of destination), while a smaller group was released with electronic monitoring ankle bracelets on “humanitarian” grounds.
Aside from what I believe is a cruel and racist immigration policy, does it strike anyone else as suspicious that this raid would come at the start of the Democratic National Convention? This reeks of a Roveian plot to draw attention away from the Democrats and emphasize Republicans’ tough stance on immigration in an attempt to maintain a divided electorate. My guess is that we’ll see more of these raids before the election, especially since we’ve got detention centers to fill (a $385 million contract was awarded to Halliburton subsidary Kellogg, Brown, and Root on February 3, 2006 to build temporary immigration detention centers). Watch for this to become the gay marriage of the 2008 election, and for the fear-baited lower class (intellectually lower, that is) to fall for it and vote for McCain.
Aside from what I believe is a cruel and racist immigration policy, does it strike anyone else as suspicious that this raid would come at the start of the Democratic National Convention? This reeks of a Roveian plot to draw attention away from the Democrats and emphasize Republicans’ tough stance on immigration in an attempt to maintain a divided electorate. My guess is that we’ll see more of these raids before the election, especially since we’ve got detention centers to fill (a $385 million contract was awarded to Halliburton subsidary Kellogg, Brown, and Root on February 3, 2006 to build temporary immigration detention centers). Watch for this to become the gay marriage of the 2008 election, and for the fear-baited lower class (intellectually lower, that is) to fall for it and vote for McCain.
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