The Pink Flamingo :: Now That the NYTimes Says Illegals Die in Detention…Will Anyone Care...Yet?

They are now called Juan Crow Laws.

I have a real problem here. I am noticing a growing trend within conservative (extreme, not Republican) blog ranks to classify La Raza as racist. Along with that, there seems to be this under tone that maybe Hispanics are less than acceptable. Or, if they are, we’re talking “OUR” Hispanics and the other (UPPITY) Hispanics. Let’s face some very nasty facts here. The same individuals who fought against the Civil Rights reforms and integration in the Sixties are the very ones helping to promote hard-line immigration reform. Does it make you think – just a little?

The other day I encountered a very liberal, pro-Obama blog. The blog owner was angry because "conservative Christians" were lying about Obama being Islamic. Her plea, was something like 'are there any "Christian" conservatives or Republicans out there who can get beyond the possibility that he is Muslim. I left a comment, telling her "I am a Christian. I have an adopted sister who is Muslim. Frankly, I don't care if Barack Obama worships the Flying Purple People Eater, I am against him because he is so liberal." She responded by thanking me for being honest. I was the first Christian to respond in a positive fashion.

That is a terrifying responsibility. I am a Christian. I follow the teachings of Christ. I cannot support hard-line anti-immigration reform because it violates everything I believe. Read the Sermon on the Mount. Then read the stories I have below.

Hispanics are human beings. ICE detainees are human beings and should receive (at the very least) the same treatment our Islamic enemies who are being detained at Gitmo. Unfortunately the more we hear about it, the more we realize how sub-standard their treatment actually is.

I guess it doesn’t matter, does it. These people are “illegal” so they deserve no humane treatment, right?

Would someone please explain to me why the heck ICE is arresting Illegals who are in the process of leaving the US and crossing into Mexico. I can see checking on those who are criminal and taking them down, but the rank and file migrants, come on. Let’s face it, the only LOGICAL reason for this is to (could it be possible) removing the burden of money they might be carrying? Immigration Prof Blog links to an LA Times article.

“…Pobrecitos (poor people)," said Lily Lujan, who watched the immigrants being arrested as she walked to the border crossing. "They were almost home. If they're already leaving the country, what's the problem?"

Federal agents say the checkpoints are a productive way to stop dangerous criminals, drug shipments and money launderers.

The illegal immigrants they apprehend are typically turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol for processing. Unless they have serious criminal records or numerous immigration violations, most are returned to Mexico within a few hours, the agents say.

Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center of Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego, said he was not aware of similar crackdowns in the past. The checkpoints make sense for intercepting contraband, but targeting illegal immigrants voluntarily leaving the country is a "bizarre" way of handling the illegal immigration question, he said.

Other critics call it an enormous waste of resources and say it could be counterproductive and discourage immigrants from going home.

"There are people that want to go back, and even though they haven't done anything wrong, they might be intimidated from leaving," said Morones of the Border Angels. "It makes no sense."

But groups that fight illegal immigration praise federal authorities for showing more willingness to enforce existing immigration laws aggressively. Focusing on the criminality of people entering the country is only part of the job of border agencies, they say.

Rick Oltman, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, said he hoped that the crackdown on departing illegal immigrants would be expanded to other exit points across the country.

He said apprehended immigrants who returned home to Mexico would become "ambassadors of enforcement" and might help deter illegal immigration….”

DETAINEE MISTREATMENT
The New York Times has suddenly discovered that people are dying while being detained by ICE and held in private detention centers. People are suffering in these substandard facilities, but since they are illegal, who gives a you-know-what, right?

I gather it is acceptable to rape women who are being detained, right?
From the NYTimes:

“…The list of deaths where Mr. Bah’s name surfaced is often cryptic. Along with 13 deaths cited as suicides and 14 as the result of cardiac ailments, it offers such causes as “undetermined” and “unwitnessed arrest, epilepsy.” No one’s nationality is given, some places of detention are omitted, and some names and birth dates seem garbled. As a result, many families could not be tracked down for this article.

But when they could be, they posed more disturbing questions.

In California, relatives of Walter Rodriguez-Castro, 28, said they were rebuffed when they tried to find out why his calls had stopped coming from the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield in April 2006. Then in June, his wife went to his scheduled hearing in San Francisco’s immigration court and learned that he had been dead for many weeks, his body unclaimed in the county morgue.

The coroner found that Mr. Rodriguez-Castro, a mover from El Salvador in the country illegally, had died of undiagnosed meningitis and H.I.V., after days complaining of fever, stiff neck and vomiting. The cause of death on the government’s list: “unresponsive.”

Immigration authorities said on Friday that the case was now under review, but would not answer questions about it or other deaths on the list. Sgt. Ed Komin, a spokesman for the jail, said the death had been promptly reported to immigration officials, who were responsible for notifying families.

Four sons in another family, in Sacramento, described trying for days to get medical care for their father, Maya Nand, a 56-year-old legal immigrant from Fiji, at a detention center run by the Corrections Corporation in Eloy, Ariz. Mr. Nand, an architectural draftsman, had been ailing when he was taken into custody on Jan. 13, 2005, apparently because his application for citizenship had been rejected, based on an earlier conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence. In collect calls, the sons said, he told them that despite his chest pains and breathing problems, doctors at the detention center did not take his condition seriously….”

ALLOWED TO SUFFER
“…He was handcuffed and placed in leg restraints on the floor with medical approval, “to prevent injury,” a guard reported. “While on the floor the detainee began to yell in a foreign language and turn from side to side,” the guard wrote, and the medical staff deemed that “the screaming and resisting is behavior problems.”

Mr. Bah was ordered to calm down. Instead, he kept crying out, then “began to regurgitate on the floor of medical,” the report said. So Mr. Bah was written up for disobeying orders. And with the approval of a physician assistant, Michael Chuley, who wrote that Mr. Bah’s fall was unwitnessed and “questionable,” the tailor was taken in shackles to a solitary confinement cell with instructions that he be monitored.

Under detention protocols, an officer videotaped Mr. Bah as he lay vomiting in the medical unit, but the camera’s battery failed, guards wrote, when they tried to tape his trip to cell No. 7.

Inside the cell, a supervisor removed Mr. Bah’s restraints. He was unresponsive to questions asked by the Public Health Service officer on duty, a report said, adding: “The detainee set up in his bed and moan and he fell to his left side and hit his head on the bed rail.”

About 9 a.m., with the approval of the health officer and a federal immigration agent, the cell was locked.

The watching began. As guards checked hourly, Mr. Bah appeared to be asleep on the concrete floor, snoring. But he could not be roused to eat lunch or dinner, and at 7:10 p.m., “he began to breathe heavily and started foaming slightly at the mouth,” a guard wrote. “I notified medical at this time.” However, the nurse on duty rejected the guard’s request to come check, according to reports. And at 8 p.m., when the warden went to the medical unit to describe Mr. Bah’s condition, the nurse, Raymund Dela Pena, was not alarmed. “Detainee is likely exhibiting the same behavior as earlier in the day,” he wrote, adding that Mr. Bah would get a mental health exam in the morning.

About 10:30 p.m., more than 14 hours after Mr. Bah’s fall, the same nurse, on rounds, recognized the gravity of his condition: “unresponsive on the floor incontinent with foamy brown vomitus noted around mouth.” Smelling salts were tried. Mr. Bah was carried back to the medical unit on a stretcher.

Just before 11, someone at the jail called 911.

When an ambulance left Mr. Bah at the hospital, brain scans showed he had a fractured skull and hemorrhages at all sides of his swelling brain. He was rushed to surgery, and the detention center was informed of the findings.

But in a report to their supervisors the next day, immigration officials at the center described Mr. Bah’s ailment as “brain aneurysms” — a diagnosis they corrected a week later to “hemorrhages,” without mentioning the skull fracture. After Mr. Bah’s death, they wrote that his hospitalization was “subsequent to a fall in the shower.”

The nurse, Mr. Dela Pena, and the physician assistant, Mr. Chuley, said that only their superiors could discuss the case. The Public Health Service did not respond to questions, and the Corrections Corporation said medical decisions were the responsibility of the Public Health Service.

Mr. Bah’s cousins demanded an autopsy, but the Union County medical examiner’s confidential report was not completed until Dec. 6. It was sent to the county prosecutor’s office only as a matter of routine, because the matter had been classified as an “unattended accident resulting in death.”

Prosecutors said they did not investigate….”
ICE NOW RAIDING ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
Let’s be hones here and admit ICE is now conducting a legal reign of terror against anyone Hispanic.

“…Immigration raids near schools in Berkeley and Oakland have sent waves of panic in the communities and may keep undocumented students from attending class, writes NAM education reporter Amanda Martinez. OAKLAND, Calif. - ...As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered. Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government." He labeled the ICE actions "inappropriate and unnecessary" and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. "There should be no raids in Oakland," he said. "As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect." Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."…”