Anti Immigrants responsible for Hate crimes? Yes or no?

Our anti-immigrant Politics, and many Anchor news dehumanizes the undocumented Immigrant as the “worst enemy" the way our military does during wartime; it lessens the burden of our atrocities on our consciences. This new racism equates "illegal immigrant" with "criminal behavior" and makes bigotry and HATE crime acceptable. For even the most bigoted amongst them like Lou Dobbs presenting false, unworthy, or knowingly tainted news, undermining the existence of journalism and correspondence credibility.

I can understand why people would have a problem with that. I can understand the arguments of people who believe there are more pressing concerns or the economy can't handle more immigrants. I don't agree, but I can understand. What I can't understand is dehumanizing, denigrating, diminished and demonizing undocumented immigrants, who are often taking one of the few opportunities to better themselves in the midst of the despair and ugliness of a world that often seems beyond broken.

Thus contrary to Federal regulations, U.S. Constitution, Civil rights statues and Basic Humanitarian rights in which the United States of America pride its itself and so vehemently upholds, stands for, and preaches around the World: It’s allowing within populist anchor news and organizations to outright violate the mentioned laws, statues, regulations, ethic, and procedural due process under the veil of unjust laws incompassed in the guise of the War on Terrorism in propaganda fashion.

I want to point out a couple of points what Lou Dobbs promoting on his segment Broken Borders and Border Security.

1.-Racism, Anti Immigrant Sentiment: Against a particular race, color, creed of people not only to those now labeled as Aliens/Illegal Immigrants of Mexican descendency, heritage and culture, but to those whom are Mexican American Citizens, Chicanos, or Hispanic Origin.

When Lou Dobbs speak of broken borders, and border security because of a terror threat from Al Qaeda, assimilates and associates two very different issues!! That of predominately Mexican migrant workers to this continent, and those of foreign Muslim Al Qaeda fighters. Thus a migrant people who come to work and live the American Dream and those foreign Immigrants with motives Terrorist.
This misleading, distorting, and twisting of the facts has expressively been sensationalized against the Undocumented worker as an Anti Immigrant sentiment.
This issues have been created a hostile, prejudice, fearful, and aggressive environment for a Hispanic race of people or those with Hispanic surnames in particular Mexican Americans, Chicanos, or just because looks kind a Mexican. See picture.











Lou Dobbs has polarized the Nation by sensationalizing the unjust laws, immigration reform, and blaming every social ill in the U.S. on the Mexican People as tough they are solely responsible.

Lou Dobbs has exploited and bashed the Mexican people for crossing the border. Which in itself is a minor offence? By, But not limited to discriminating, affiliating, associating, and profiling Mexicans, Hispanics, Latino people legal or undocumented with groups or organization of Terrorists implying that Mexicans could bring a Dirty Bomb. This is false and outrageous when the sons and daughters of Mexican descent are spilling their blood in the War WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq, and is in violation of constitutional rights. Thus creating an environment of hostility, anger, depriving freedom from fear of persecution and Liberty

Used, Abused, and Know treated as the worst Criminals. Outrageous.

There was all the symbolism necessary for the glory he seeks: hundreds of men dressed in prison stripes with pink underwear protruding from their waists,
surrounded by even more heavily armed guards and at a given moment an old man gave a signal and they were marched through a public street into a tent jail that would house only other men of their color and status surrounded by a high electrified fence... and the old man pontificated about the law...Chihuahua hasta cuando esto va a parar, This a reminder to all Latinos, Hispanics and those looks kinda a Mexican.
We need to stop the continues violation of our civil rights, we have been diminished day by day, they are killing us by their hatred emotions day by day, They are demonizing everyone just because we look kinda a Mexican....I ask myself what's wrong with being or look like Mexican? or that Racism?. Do you believe you have been attained or acquired equally rights as Hispanic or Latino?. Nooooooo. do you ever heard this comment from Real State Agents: Do not buy a house on this neighborhood; you will better off on Latino or Hispanic community. How many times do you hear this comments at Dealerships, You are not qualified for this loan because your credit is bad?; But someone else with the same credit or even worst get better rate and loan performance. We always have been used and abused, stereotyping, discriminated, demonized and racially segregated. We need to stop and send a clear message. Enough is enough. We are entitled to a same and equal rights like everybody else.

While on Immigration there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue, the debate has also been framed, at times, by vitriolic anti-immigrant – and particularly anti-Hispanic – rhetoric and propaganda. Purveyors of this extremist rhetoric use stereotypes and outright bigotry to target immigrants kinda look like Mexican and hold them responsible for numerous societal ills. Why?. see some of the vitriols arguments from Anti Immigrants groups:

1.-Describing immigrants as "third world invaders," who come to America to destroy our heritage, "colonize" the country and attack our "way of life." This charge is used against Hispanics, Asians and other people of color.


2.-Using terminology that describes immigrants as part of "hordes" that "swarm" over the border. This dehumanizing language has become common.


3.-Portraying immigrants as carriers of diseases like leprosy, tuberculosis, Chagas disease (a potentially fatal parasitic disease), dengue fever, polio, malaria.


4.-Depicting immigrants as criminals, murderers, rapists, terrorists, and a danger to children and families.


5.-Propagating conspiracy theories about an alleged secret "reconquista" plot by Mexican immigrants to create a "greater Mexico" by seizing seven states in the American Southwest that once belonged to Mexico.

A trail of a Joke comes to a Reality. Canada deports disabled U.K. Citizen.

::: BREAKING NEWS :::
In 2009 the government will start deporting
all the mentally ill people.
I started crying when I thought of you.
Run my little crazy friend, run!

Well, what can I say?? Someone sent it to me, and I'm NOT going alone !!

I receive this email that it may offend some people like me but many found it to be so funny. You will said that I do not have a sense of Humour but you are wrong; I believe we should not be laughing on behalf of the people who needs us the most, people who needs our care, our compassion, our support, our understanding and we needs to change our inmoral behavior to be more Humane. I understood from the beginning that Canada was a Green, tolerant, modern thinking, progressive nation....how wrong. Shame on you Canada.!!!! This is why I am ashamed and disgusted from this joke comes to a reality for people who needs us the most. See for yourself and do not forget about Pedro Guzman mentally disabled U.S. citizen who was mistakenly deported to Mexico.

Canada deports disabled U.K. citizen

A British man who was injured while working in Canada has been deported because authorities concluded keeping him in the country would be an economic burden for taxpayers.

Chris Mason, 36, was ordered deported to the United Kingdom after Canadian immigration officials determined that granting the wheelchair-bound man permanent resident status would create an undue economic burden.

Border services agents took Mason to Winnipeg's James Richardson International Airport on Monday and put him on a flight to Manchester. Several of Mason's friends were at the airport to give him money and his belongings — but they were barred from seeing him. Mason had been in detention since last Wednesday.

Mason said he had no desire to return to England where he hasn't lived since he was a child. He lived with his father in Greece before coming to Canada in 2001.

Once here, he began working as a truck driver in Ontario and British Columbia before settling in Winnipeg. The long-haul trucker became a paraplegic after damaging his back on the job.

Mason was further injured in 2007 when he was hit by a taxi while leaving hospital and has been unable to work since.

He had been living in Canada illegally without a visa for more than two years and had been collecting social assistance while battling Manitoba's Public Insurance Corp. over injury benefits when his application for permanent resident status was denied.

"You'd think he was a terrorist," said his mother Gillian Kilford from Manchester. "He was injured during the course of this work. After a period of readjustment he went back to work. He paid taxes in Canada."

She said her son would face hardship finding wheelchair accessible accommodation in Britain. Her son would not be able to negotiate the stairs in her home, she said, adding she had no idea Monday where or when Mason would arrive back in the U.K. since no one from the Canada Border Services Agency had contacted her to make arrangements to greet him at any U.K. airport. "I expect they'll just dump him at immigration," she said.

Advocates for the disabled have been lobbying for Canada to amend the Immigration Act, removing a clause that says anyone who might cause undue economic demand on the social welfare system can be denied the right to live here.

Refugees, who can be injured before being admitted to Canada, are excluded from the "excessive demand" clause in the Immigration Act, but the clause applies to everyone else.

"The Immigration Act frankly prohibits people with disabilities from immigrating to Canada," said Laurie Beachell of Disabled People's International. "The effect would mean people like Stephen Hawking, world-renowned physicist, brilliant man, could never become Canadian

Why we remained silent towards Racism and Hate against Minorities?

I do understand that people living in fear due to the Economic Crisis, but that is not an excuse, or reason to response and utilize hate or racism as a vehicle as escape of they own emotional actions against Minorities. Every time ICE reinforce Raids and safety, We develop a big wave of fear but we do not understand that the most destructive element in the human mind is fear and FEAR creates aggressiveness.

STOP HATE, STOP RACISM, ENDS INTOLERANCE, AND STOP BIGOTRY.

ANCHOR NEWS MUST BEING ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ANTI IMMIGRANT TONE.

We should learn the ART OF HEARING, We always Translating what others are saying. There is a difference between the comprehension of words and the comprehension of the state of Fear. If you ask me whether is possible to live without fear or not? I will said yes, We need to stop make comparison and identify your causes of fear. Then if you identified those are your factors and your mind seeing those as bringing about fear then the very perception of those factors ends the contributory causes.

A spate of seemingly unrelated incidents in Mountain View — a vandalized school sign; middle school students chased down a street by BB gun wielding teens; a neighbor unhappy about Latino day laborers; and more recently, an e-mail peppered with racial insults directed at the new mayor — has rattled officials and leaders of a city that views itself as a model of diversity.

Days before she was sworn in to office, Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga, the city's first Asian-American female mayor, received e-mail through her public City Hall address. "I can't believe this city elected a stupid Asian-American like you," Abe-Koga quoted from the unsigned e-mail, which went on to blame undocumented immigrants for the country's economic woes.

"It didn't surprise me," said the Harvard University graduate Abe-Koga. "But I was angry."

The day she took office Jan. 6, Abe-Koga, 38, condemned the recent incidents that occurred weeks apart late last year, and referred to the e-mail she received.

"To remain silent was something I couldn't do," Abe-Koga said. "This is not what we're about. We need to come together."

Abe-Koga has joined a growing chorus of city leaders and community groups who say the incidents may be isolated, but a forceful, vocal response is the best defense against a worrisome trend that "something is brewing" in Mountain View.

"It's happening to middle school students. It's happening to the mayor," said Oscar
Garcia, president and co-founder of Mesa de la Comunidad, a local education and advocacy group for Latinos. "The community needs to know it's happening at all levels."
Garcia is teaming up with Alicia Crank, a former city human relations commissioner, the police department and other community leaders to plan a "Not In Our Town" gathering, an event named after a 1995 film documentary about the unequivocal response by residents of Billings, Mont., against white supremacists. A similar gathering was held in Newark in 2003, a year after the killing of a transgender teenager.

"We need to ask where this is coming from," Crank said. "There's something there that needs to be exposed so we can move past it." The event has not been scheduled.
The first incident was reported the day after the November election. Garcia's wife was driving past an empty lot festooned with all sorts of candidate campaign signs. One sign stood out. "No More Aliens" was stenciled in red across a Spanish sign about school registration.

"To me it was a deliberate attempt to intimidate the Latino community," Garcia said. "To me, the message was, 'Anyone who speaks Spanish, you're not welcome here.' "
Also sometime in November, day laborers at the Mountain View Day Worker Center's old office on Escuela Avenue were confronted and reportedly intimidated by an apparently disgruntled neighbor unhappy about the immigrant workers.

"There's a lot fear," said Maria Marroquin, executive director the day worker center, which is now located near downtown Mountain View. "There's a lot of ignorance."
On Dec. 5, three white teens, ages 14 and 15, were arrested by police and charged with hate crimes, making criminal threats, brandishing a replica firearm and conspiracy to commit a felony. One of the 15-year-olds was also charged with possession of marijuana. The cases are pending in juvenile court and the identities of the teens were not released by police.

According to police, four 11-year-old Latino students were walking home from school. As they walked, the teens shouted racial comments from the open window of a house and threatened to kill the students. Then the teens chased the students down the street.
In an interview with the Mercury News, Abe-Koga, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, disclosed another incident in December. As she and her 7-year-old daughter were walking from Castro Elementary School, a group of Latino boys began talking. She said she realized later that the boys were doing a racial taunt, speaking mock Chinese.

"I just felt sadness," she said. "Maybe there's no connection between these incidents, but I want people to be aware of this problem."

Another Brutal and racist attack against Latinos.!!!!

Ya Bastaaaa. Ya BASTA, Enough is enough. One single hate crime is more than enough.!!!!!!! Alert, Alert. Alert, Alert, Alert.
This situation must called for immediate action Know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Action. Action.
The question is how are all these haters succeeding in the face of hate crime legislation?. High Alert! Some “hate groups,” they warn, are changing their approach and attempting to use Latinos, Hispanics people as vehicles for their purposes. Ashamed and Outrageous this type of crimes still happen in United States of America.!!!!!!

Colombian immigrant Wilter Sanchez, 33, was brutally attacked in Wednesday afternoon by a gang of hate-filled thugs in the town of North Plainfield, New Jersey.

Doctors at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick say that Sanchez is lucky to be alive given his injuries. They are set to perform reconstructive surgery on Sanchez' face as soon as the swelling eases.

Five African American men between the ages of 17 and 19 young years of age were arrested for the hate crime. Continue Reading here: Source:

4Th Amendment and your Freedom.

The surveillance inside the United States. Senator Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) bill (S. 2453), which Specter revised to accommodate White House requests for greater authority, would ratify and dramatically expand the President’s authority to wiretap U.S. Citizens and non U.S. Citizens.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. — Fourth Amendment, U.S. Constitution.

“If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.” — William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution’s protection of privacy.” — Harry A. Blackmun, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.” — Christopher Dodd, U.S. Senator.

Racists a Treat for Obama Administration?

Oooops you better believe it.!!!! There should be a great concern for Obama Administration for Racist groups were racist talk is supposedly protected but harmful acts are not.

Hate crimes experts and law enforcement officials are closely watching white supremacists across the country as Barack Obama becomes our first African American president of the United States.

So far, there is no known organized effort to express opposition to Obama's rise to the presidency other than a call by the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for its members to wear black armbands as well as fly the U.S. flag upside down on Inauguration Day and Obama's first full day in office.

Anger, violence and interest in racist ideology did increase in the hours and days after Obama was elected president in November, hate groups experts said.

While experts said it is difficult to determine how many people belong to hate groups, they do agree with an SPLC estimate that claims there are about 900 operating now, a 40 percent increase from 2000. The vast majority of these groups promote white supremacist beliefs, and range from skinheads living in urban areas to the KKK ,which is based largely in rural settings.

I am glad that SPLC monitoring those groups but some times It is difficult to pinpoint how many people subscribe to white supremacist views, because the Internet allows people to follow the movement under the cloak of anonymity.

Keep reading here: Source

ICE: Drugged deportees with powerful Anti-Psychotic medication.

Federal immigration officials, over the past year, have dramatically curtailed the controversial practice of sedating deportees with powerful anti-psychotic medication.

The move followed court challenges and a public outcry over the practice, which often involved the use of Haldol, a drug used to treat schizophrenia.

Data collected through Freedom of Information Act requests by The Dallas Morning News show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement sedated only 10 people in the past fiscal year. Haldol was used in only three cases.

Over the past six years, through October, federal immigration personnel sedated 384 deportees, an average of 64 a year, the government disclosed. Of those cases, 356 involved the use of Haldol.

U.S. officials defended the sedation policy but declined to discuss it in detail, including the frequency with which sedation has been used, which led The News to request the information through the Freedom of Information Act.

U.S. officials say the procedure is done on the recommendation of medical personnel and now requires a court order – a change made when the American Civil Liberties Union began opposing the procedure and after Julie L. Myers, then assistant homeland security secretary, learned of the cases.

"When we do ask the court to involuntarily sedate, it is both necessary to effectuate removal and medically appropriate," said Pat Reilly, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

Critics said there had been no effective oversight of the process, and some continue to say that the policy violates medical ethics. They praised the use of the court order and sedation restrictions.

"What you are seeing here is that the courts have proven once again that sunshine is the best disinfectant," said Wade Henderson, a lawyer and the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.

Though the agency has dramatically reduced its use of Haldol to sedate deportees, the practice remains controversial.

Haldol is used to treat schizophrenia and such psychotic symptoms as hallucinations, delusions and hostility.

It is sometimes used in hospital emergency rooms to manage acute agitation and psychosis.

Medical authorities say the use of Haldol carries potential complications. The drug can trigger such adverse reactions as muscular spasms and a condition known as neuroleptic malignant syndrome that can result in a coma and even death if left untreated.

Scott Allen, an internist and co-founder of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights in Providence, R.I., said he opposes sedation except for deportees with schizophrenia or other mental illness.

"The medical community needs to assert itself and make clear the medical ethics of involuntary chemical restraint: It is not acceptable," he said.

As for its decline in use, Dr. Allen said, "That is certainly encouraging, but it enforces the impression they were overusing forced medication in the past."


New policy

ICE established the policy of requiring a court order for involuntary sedation of detainees during removal with "no exceptions" in January. ICE said it restated a policy from June 2007.

Ms. Myers, who resigned as assistant homeland security secretary, said she moved toward a policy of "getting a court order so only in the narrowest of circumstances would we proceed like this."

She defined the narrow circumstances in which sedation would be used as those in which the agency believes that "based on the advice of medical professional, that this is the only way to have a safe and secure deportation, and a court agrees with that."

The policy went into effect in June 2007 after the Los Angeles Daily Journal reported that two detainees had been forcibly drugged in an effort to sedate them for a deportation flight.

Last year, the ACLU sued the U.S. government on behalf of the two immigrants, one from Senegal and another from Indonesia. Attorneys for the men believe both were given Haldol. The case was settled for $55,000 in total for the two, and the government admitted no wrongdoing or liability.

In November 2007, the federal government attempted to get a court order to sedate an Albanian man who resisted deportation and boarding from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, screaming he would be killed if he were sent back to Albania.

The man, a political-asylum seeker, was aided by U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, who wrote a private bill that effectively stalled the Albanian's deportation until early 2009.


Government data

The government's FOIA disclosures don't indicate whether all 384 sedations were forced or voluntary. But government officials and lawyers who have represented deportees said it is clear that a significant number were involuntarily sedated.

"Immigrants are not animals," said Ahilan Arulanantham, the ACLU attorney involved in the lawsuit against Homeland Security.

A FOIA request for government data for the five fiscal years prior to Oct. 1, 2002, was denied because the federal government said it was unable to locate any records.

The issue of sedations drew further attention in May, when The Washington Post reported its use in more than 250 cases.

The report was based in part on information from the confidential medical logs of deportees.

Even before the policy shift, the practice was used in a relative handful of deportations. In fiscal year 2007, more than 240,000 people went through deportation proceedings.


Race as a factor

The documents show that sedation was used disproportionately against Africans, leading some to suggest that race was a factor.

"The racial dimensions add a particularly troubling dimension to what was already an unacceptable regime of choices," said Mr. Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

U.S. officials deny that race was a factor.

"Nationality is purely coincidental," said Ms. Reilly, the ICE spokeswoman.

Over the six years, nearly 40 percent of those sedated with Haldol were Africans. No other continent had that high a percentage. The cases cover a period from October 2002 through October of this year.

According to the federal data, sedations with Haldol were scattered among deportees from all over Africa, but clusters can be found among deportees from Guinea, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal and Uganda.


On their own

Former Dallas resident Stanley Ukeni of Nigeria was deported in October 2007 after overstaying a visitor visa by more than a decade.

Mr. Ukeni pleaded with immigration officials to let him stay in the U.S., saying he had provoked the wrath of high-ranking officials in Nigeria with human-rights work he had done there on behalf of the Ibo tribe. He said he feared he would be tortured if he returned.

According to Mr. Ukeni, immigration officials gave him a choice: He could land in Lagos, Nigeria, sedated and manacled, or he could remain unsedated, fully conscious and better able to protect himself from harm. He chose to go peacefully and avoided sedation.

In a phone conversation from a relative's home in Nigeria, Mr. Ukeni said he would like to return "home" to Dallas, where he has two small U.S.-born children with his girlfriend. E-mails from Mr. Ukeni and a letter from his Nigerian attorney asserted that Mr. Ukeni had been abducted and severely beaten several times since his return.

ICE officials would not discuss specifics of Mr. Ukeni's case.

But Ms. Reilly acknowledged that deportees are on their own once they arrive in their home country.

"When we remove a person from the United States," she said, "our authority over them ends when they leave an aircraft in their country of origin.

Secrecy or Transparency: Shed sunshine on police records of drunk arrests.

Why it's not obviously silly for police to enforce and prevent public intoxication laws in bars. Whatever the legal justification for the policy in question, it still ought to be abandoned if it doesn't produce results than just racial profiling and lawsuits.
And I check on the internet and I found out a good evidence that there is a controversy on arresting people specially latinos. Check this site: Where it clearly denoted that 3/4 of those arrest are Latinos or Hispanics.

Shed Sunshine on Police records of drunk arrests.
By Skyler Porras is the director of the San José office of the ACLU of Northern California.

Amid the swirling controversy over the San Jose Police Department's practice of arresting large numbers of people — especially Latinos — under the state public-intoxication law, the department is damaging its reputation by choosing secrecy over transparency.
Before the city council hearing on Nov. 18, the American Civil Liberties Union submitted a formal request that these arrest reports be made public under the state open-records law. But days after the mayor and council said they wanted "broad-based community input" on the issue, the police department refused to publicly release the arrest records.
The council has directed the city manager to form a task force of community stakeholders to address this issue. But how will the task force members accurately identify the scope and nature of the problem if they are denied access to the most important records documenting it?

Simple questions

The Mercury News' reporting on this subject and analysis of the available arrest data have put two very simple, if uncomfortable, questions at the feet of local public officials:
Has the police department been making large numbers of false arrests for public drunkenness?
If so, are Latinos much more likely to be the victims of these bad arrests?
According to state law, people cannot be lawfully arrested for public intoxication unless they are so intoxicated that they are a danger to themselves or others or are obstructing use of sidewalks or streets. Officers must document these facts in a police report. Therefore, the obvious starting point for any serious examination of whether police are misusing this law is to review the police reports for these arrests. As the Mercury News reported, there were a whopping 4,661 of them in 2007. Fifty-seven percent of those arrested were Latinos.
The law is crystal clear that police officials have the discretion to release these records. But in the absence of a strong local sunshine ordinance in San Jose, as exists in some other California cities like Oakland and San Francisco, they do not have to do so.
The official justification for stamping these arrest reports "top secret" was the claim that they are "records of investigations." But releasing the police reports wouldn't compromise any future investigations because simple intoxication busts don't lead to any further investigation. And any prosecutions or further proceedings for public intoxication arrests that took place in 2007 were closed long ago.

Secrecy is bad policy

Chief Rob Davis has been a vocal opponent of a local sunshine ordinance that would require the police to make these sorts of records public. It's not a big surprise that a police agency would act to shield unlawful and embarrassing tactics from public scrutiny. But it's poor public policy to allow it. Unnecessary secrecy has a corrosive effect on public trust and closes doors to cooperative approaches.
Stonewalling community concerns about possible police misconduct doesn't lead to resolution. It leads to lawsuits. It leads to investigations by outside agencies — like the about-to-be-revived Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice: During the tenure of the presumptive Obama Attorney General Eric Holder at the Justice Department, the agency targeted local police departments for investigations specifically if they appeared to be stonewalling legitimate local concerns.
A well-conceived sunshine law would create a strong local legal presumption in favor of openness. Isn't it time for San Jose to adopt one?

The Border Patrol checkpoints are Constitutional?

The Border Patrol in Washington is burgeoning in the post-9/11 world. It's got more agents, better equipment, a new station -- and it's making a lot of arrests.

But it has also adopted a tactic that has raised both questions and ire: interior roadblocks dozens of miles from the nearest border.

Since the end of February, the U.S. Border Patrol has operated 53 roadblocks -- border agents call them "tactical traffic checkpoints" -- at the Anacortes ferry terminal, on state Route 20 near Newhalem and on U.S. Highway 101 on the Olympic Peninsula.

The statistics speak for themselves as to the effectiveness of the roadblocks:

81 undocumented immigrants taken into custody;

19 people turned over to other agencies for state crimes; and

24,524 vehicles carrying 41,912 passengers checked.

Out of 41,000+ ID checks, the haven't caught any "terrorists.

To the Border Patrol, the checkpoints are a testament to its efficacy in deterring terrorists, stopping drug smugglers and deporting undocumented immigrants. But others say the price of such enhanced security is a diminution of American liberty.

"How much are we willing to give up?" asks Lois Danks, coordinator of the Stop the Checkpoints Committee on the Olympic Peninsula. "Do we give up our freedom of movement and our privacy? If they stop thousands of people and catch 10 people who work in a Mexican restaurant, how much does that increase our security?"

Border Patrol Chief John Bates points out the checkpoints have been ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. And he says that his agents are simply carrying out their duties as defined by the law, which allows such checkpoints within 100 miles of the border. We run these checkpoints to have an impact on the organizations that bring in narcotics, undocumented immigrants or who potentially could bring terrorists or weapons of mass destruction into the U.S.," Bates said.

With organized narcotics and people-smuggling rings, "we are having an impact," said Bates, who said he has received intelligence reports confirming the checkpoints' deterrent value.

"These organizations do know about the checkpoints and that there is a heightened likelihood that they would be apprehended if they brought people or narcotics across the border."

The Border Patrol has been proactive in trying to explain the checkpoints to affected communities.

"We have a mission that we have to conduct," Bates said.

Bates and other agents heard from a largely disgruntled crowd of about 350 Olympic Peninsula residents at a recent meeting at Chimacum High School.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Bermudez said the patrol sought to explain that the checkpoints provide "prevention through deterrence."

It was apparently a tough sell. "I wouldn't say it was a hostile crowd, but it was unsupportive of checkpoints. There were people there that no matter what we shared with them, they were not going to feel any different. But I'm sure there were people on the fence who might have been swayed."

Shankar Narayan, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, was not swayed. "I would say the overwhelming energy in the room was a mood of great concern about the expansion of Border Patrol activities on the Peninsula," Narayan said. "The question in the air was, where does this encroachment on our rights end?"
Narayan said the ACLU is exploring the possibility of filing a lawsuit to stop them.

The Border Patrol is the largest uniformed agency charged with carrying out immigration laws. It is caught in the crossfire of people who oppose laws and policies that result in deportation of undocumented immigrants who are productive members of rural Washington communities.

Danks, for example, said she opposes deporting undocumented Mexicans who have been here for years, working hard and raising children who are American citizens.

The Washington Farm Bureau also has concerns about the roadblocks' impact on agricultural communities.

"We've got these workers and neighbors who are our friends," said Dan Fazio, director of employer services at the Farm Bureau. "At what point does it not feel like America anymore?"
Remember Benjamin Franklin Quote:

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Or the quote or George Orwell:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

But the question should be base on the facts; So Let's see if I have this right they stopped 25,000 plus vehicles and asked 41,000 plus people for their papers only to nab 100 people 19 of whom were citizens. The statistics speak for themselves as to the effectiveness of the roadblocks:"
That amounts to a .004 rate of efficiency. This sounds like a big waste of time and money to me. The big problem I see with this is demanding 41,000 U.S. citizens for their papers. Sounds like Nazi Germany to me, Papers please. What happened to freedom of movement; There is a serious dilemma and I could argue either side.

I thought they were set up to catch "terrorists" - that's the original idea behind the roadblocks. It's Funny how the mission changes once they're set up for it.
I'm always amazed at how easy we give up our Constitutional rights to feel safe or because we have or are in fear.

There was recently a post by the excellent Radley Balko on this very topic over at Reason's Hit & Run blog. The 190 Million exception to the fourth amendment includes a map showing the affected area. From the post:The ACLU says that since September 11, 2001, the government has been steadily stretching the limits of Martinez, to the point where the Department of Homeland Security is using that case and the terrorism threat to conduct more thorough, more invasive searches at dozens of checkpoints across the country. With 33 checkpoints now in operation, we're not exactly to the point of "Ihre Papiere, bitte" Berlin yet, but the ACLU does warn that the area of the country 100 miles from every border and coastline would include about 190 million people, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population