This thread isn't about open borders. That is another whole discussion. This thread is about how the ICE, and the federal government Department of Homeland Security, is using its mandate to "secure the homeland" to conduct raids on US citizens, and legal resident aliens, with brown skin of latino (specifically Mexican) origins, in the process violating their constitutional rights. It is about shameful tactics, and it is about my countrymen's tendency to rationalize racist and fascist tactics because "there is a problem". I am asking folks to come to their senses. So we can agree that there is an illegal immigration problem, yes? Does that justify using commando tactics to check papers? Does that justify inhuman treatment of US citizens and law abiding workers to catch 4% of them that are lawbreakers? Forget the immigration issue for a moment. We also have a drug problem in certain areas. If you live in that area, is it justified to detain everyone who lives in that area and force them to be tested? We have a problem with identity theft in this country. Is it legitimate to round up all computer users until we have the time to screen all computers for illegal usage?

And Bill, are you suggesting that the latino population of this country causes the problems? There is a problem on the border and in the southwest States. The problem is a whole economy built on the backs of disenfranchised people. There are whole industries that depend on hiring undocumented folks because they can get them cheap. These folks are trying to get a start for their families, and take these jobs just to survive. I am in these trenches every day, buddy. I am the one that used the terms you chose to quote about folks just trying to support their families. The question remanins. Can you not get the distinction between folks just trying to make a better life and the so called "war on terror"? Nothing in that implies that we don't have a problem with illegal immigration. What it does say is that an administration run amok, with a Department that has few checks on it, is using these poor folks as a tool to give legitimacy for a policy that is the biggest threat to our constitution in my lifetime. We, the American populace, are empowering them with our lack of vigilance in speaking out about what it means to be American. We need an immigration policy.... fine. Does that justify treating working folks, 96% of which were doing nothing more than getting up, dropping their kids at school or daycare, and going to work, as if they had some guilt because of how they look and where their ancestors came from?

As usual, the conversation takes its own path, but I will continue to try and pull it back from a general discussion of immigration to a discussion about why we give a pass to policies that are racist and wrong.

Mick