Help immigration raid orphans

By Heraclitus

I've been out of town for the past little bit, and am generally extremely busy just now and don't really have time for a proper post on this, but please read this post by Nezua and check out The Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) page, with lots of information. In a nutshell, the situation is this: a recent raid on a defense contractor in Massachusetts resulted in the arrest of around 350 immigrants, some of whom were certainly not in the system at all but many of whom appear to have filed immigration papers. Many of those arrested were women, and their families, including many children, have been left alone. The post by Nez and the link above explain how you can help. Whatever you think of our immigration laws, there are children who are in need of things like diapers and food and, oh yeah, a trip to see their mothers (though I wouldn't be surprised if we get at least one comment denouncing efforts to help these children, especially if Michael posts a link to this post at TMV).

According to this op-ed in The Boston Globe, the raid was carried out by homeland security. You can see their point: foreign terrorists are so 2004, and domestic terrorists are really nothing anyone ever wanted to think about. But the GOP needs to energize its "base" for 2008, and raging homophobia may no longer be sufficient. So, time to use your anti-terrorism tax dollars to harass immigrants. I don't mean to suggest that there's something monstrously hypocritical in our treatment of illegal immigrants or anything. I mean, just because these people worked for a defense contractor, let's not make some federal case out of that. Or out of the fact that the executives who arranged for all of this and created hundreds of false documents were out on bail without spending a night in jail. But if this sort of thing sticks in your craw, you can always call/write your Congressfolks and tell them you want significant changes to our immigration laws. Or just start a rumor that Tom Tancredo is like totally teh gay.

Update: Sheelzebub at Pandagon has written a great post on some of these issues that you should read.