The Pink Flamingo :: More Minutemen Messes, Deportation & Kids

“…Paul Newman, the board supervisor of Cochise County, Arizona, where Simcox has been building his barbed wire fences, said Simcox's plan for a border fence was a pipe dream from the very beginning. He explained that because the border is a patchwork of public and private land, a private fence builder could never get permission to build on all of it….”

EPHRAIM CRUZ RESIGNS
I’ve been following the story of Ephraim Cruz for months.
He is a Border Patrol agent out of Tucson who blew the whistle on mistreatment of detainees. Well, they’ve finally forced him to resign his post. Funny how none of the conservative anti-immigration usual suspects never even mention him or his plight.
From Immigration Prof Blog

“…Today, after 9 years and 6 months of federal service, I part with my classmates and write to inform you that I am resigning from my position as a Senior Patrol Agent with the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector/Douglas Station effective November 9, 2007. This decision culminates the lengthy dispute with the Border Patrol over the condoned mistreatment of detained migrants in Border Patrol custody throughout the Tucson Sector’s Stations and the Border Patrol’s decision to retaliate against me for having reported the agency’s indiscretions that clearly continue to this day. My reporting this Border Patrol malfeasance honored my oath to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I” entered. The Border Patrol’s motto is “Honor First.” Yet, my credibility was impugned for living that very motto.

Irrespective of how the Border Patrol treats individuals entrusted into their custody, employing practices which blatantly circumvent and violate the agency’s own written policies, Arizona child abuse laws, Cochise and Pima county fire, safety, and health codes, and civil and human rights, and how an Agent will be treated for reporting such practices and violations, the fact remains that it has been a privilege and honor for me to have once again served my country, this time in the capacity of a Border Patrol Agent. During my tenure in this position, I steadfastly exercised my allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the duties inherent in this role, in this order, and to nothing and no one else.
The Border Patrol’s Agents, like every other government institutions’ Agents, are expected to do what is right and what we have sworn to uphold over what is expedient to our own ends. As you lead this Sector, I implore you to live the struggling Border Patrol motto “Honor First” in accordance with the oath we all take upon hire as federal Agents….”

A profile of Cruz

“…Another practice Ephraim found disturbing was “supervisors’ thwarting of an Agent’s efforts to determine the appropriate citizenship of illegal entrants… preferring [that detainees] are assumed to be from Mexico”. (Letter from Cruz to R. Grijalva, Congressman D-AZ, 2004) Ephraim described to me how at the U.S.-Mexico border, if an undocumented alien is found to have citizenship other than Mexican, they are classified as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and must be detained and officially deported to their country of citizenship. However, Mexican nationals without a criminal record in the U.S. are offered a “Voluntary Return (VR)” to Mexico — an option that is faster and cheaper for the American government.
Ephraim was angered that “agents have been retaliated against for determining [a detainee’s] true country of citizenship”, (Letter from Cruz to R. Grijalva, Congressman D-AZ, 2004) and were instead encouraged to assume Mexican nationality of any alien who ”was brown and could pass for Mexican” by speaking Spanish. For a man who took to heart issues of national security, Ephraim was galled when he realized that “even if they were a terrorist, [a detainee] could be returned to Mexico without incident”, based purely on institutionalized racial profiling. Rather than to process the lengthy paperwork involved in deporting a detainee, supervisors were content to let them be, according to Ephraim, “somebody else’s problem”, even if it meant allowing another 9/11.

In a similar practice, agents were lax in checking backgrounds of those who came to claim detained unaccompanied minors. In a Tucson Weekly article, Ephraim describes how minors were frequently released “to anybody who claims that they are this person’s father, uncle or guardian”. No concern was placed on the safety of minors released into the care of those who might be complete strangers.

But, most heart-wrenching for Ephraim was the observation that detainees were frequently going twenty to thirty hours at a time without food. In his March 21, 2004 memo, Ephraim recounts how he watched a young ten-year-old boy — whom his mother described as in good health — break out into red bumps after going more than twenty hours without a meal. Later that same day, Ephraim remembers how a young girl went more than thirty hours without food, and complained of feeling faint. These were hardly isolated incidents: Ephraim remembers countless children and pregnant women who went without food for two or three shifts at a time….”

Mary Ann Zehr has an interesting article in Education Week about the effects of chronic deportation and kids.

“…In reporting my earlier story, I learned that the Border Patrol has a policy saying that Border Patrol agents, who work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, must have written approval from a supervisor before conducting any enforcement-related activity at schools or places of worship. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which falls under a different branch of the U.S. Homeland Security Department than Border Patrol—has a policy that "arresting fugitives at schools, hospitals, or places of worship is strongly discouraged, unless the alien poses an immediate threat to national security or the community."

Nevertheless, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of these kinds of incidents.
Nov. 7 update: The Associated Press reports today that Arizona Border Patrol agents will no longer be called to campuses of Tucson Unified School District. The article says the policy change came out of a meeting yesterday between the Tucson police department and school district officials, who requested the meeting…”.

Immigration Prof Blog

THE BORDER FENCE
(or)
THE GREAT MINUTEMAN SCAM
From CNN
CNN:

“…The fence was described on the Minuteman Web site as 14 feet high, with security cameras and sensors, topped with razor wire and flanked by ditches to stop vehicles. Simcox referred to it as an "Israeli-style" fence, similar to the barrier Israel has erected to keep Palestinians from crossing from the West Bank. Many Minuteman state and national leaders said that the fence proposal was a complete surprise to them. "All of a sudden we hear, 'We are going to build a fence if the government doesn't build it!' We all looked at each other and said, 'What!'" said David Jones, a former Minuteman member.

Donations started flowing in. One man actually mortgaged his home and contributed more than $100,000. And on Memorial Day of last year, there was a groundbreaking ceremony on John Ladd's Arizona ranch. But what the Minutemen were building was not a tall, Israeli-style fence. Former member Bob Wright said, "It wasn't until they actually started the ceremony that it became clear. It was gonna be a cow fence!" It was a five-strand barbed wire fence that would keep Ladd's cattle in and keep Mexican cattle out. Ladd said he is happy with the fence. But some Minuteman leaders were stunned. In their first-ever interview, these former Simcox lieutenants told CNN they believed that the groundbreaking was a ploy by Simcox to raise even more money.

As a group, these leaders started to question Simcox about how donations were being spent. They wanted to him to provide specifics as to how much money was being raised and how it was being used. "To this day, we still don't know how much the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has raised. We don't have a clue, not a clue," Wright said. They said they wanted to know why the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps was not spending money to help volunteers patrol the borders.

"We needed equipment, and we were not getting equipment," Jones said.They demanded that Simcox meet them in person to address their concerns and answer their questions. They say he refused to meet with them and subsequently fired them. Simcox now says that he never promised to build the high-tech security fence on Ladd's ranch. And he insists the barbed-wire fence really does protect the country. As the Minutemen strung their wire on Ladd's property, another Arizona border rancher, Richard Hodges, agreed to allow Simcox to build nearly a mile of that Israeli-style fence on his land. That was 10 months ago. CNN visited Hodges' ranch a few weeks ago and found an as-yet-unfinished, tall, wire-mesh fence. There is no razor wire, no trenches, no cameras, which were to be the fancy facial-recognition type….”