Ma'am, You're Going To Have To Come With Us
Under a recent decision by the Supreme Court, the Office of Homeland Security is detaining all legal immigrants with convictions for crimes in their past. No problem?
Riiiight.
The Boston Globe today profiles 22-year old Edna Borges, a resident of the US since age 2, who was busted for shoplifting clothing back in her teenage years. She is now a responsible mother of two, with a job. She is also a prisoner.
Edna Borges thought it would take just a few minutes to check in with officials at the Bureau of Homeland Security last Friday, as she has been doing voluntarily every three months. Instead, Borges ended the day in a Bristol County jail, separated from her 10-day-old infant daughter and 2-year-old son, with no idea when she might be released. . . .
Immigration officials said Borges was detained because of a recent US Supreme Court ruling that mandates the jailing of immigrants facing deportation because they have committed crimes. The ruling affects immigrants even if they have already served a sentence and are considered to pose no threat. It stems from a California case involving South Korean native Hyung Joon Kim and is expected to affect about 15,000 immigrants a year.
''The law says mandatory detention,'' said Amy Otten, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Homeland Security. ''Anyone who falls under the Kim decision has to be detained.''
Borges, who is scheduled for a hearing before an immigration judge this morning, got her first glimpse of her two children on Wednesday through closed circuit television in a courtroom, said her lawyer, Susan Church of the law firm Salsberg and Schneider.
Borges, who was born in Portugal to a Cape Verdean family, was facing deportation because of a 1999 shoplifting conviction, for which she has served six months probation. Borges was 17 when she shoplifted the clothing on two occasions, Church said. In one incident, the clothes were worth less than $150. In the other, the items were worth more than $150, the lawyer said.
I'm so glad the Office of Homeland Security is on the case! Otherwise this hardened menace would be stalking the streets of Dorchester, raising children, working, and going to church! Kudos to the Office of Homeland Security for helping to keep our country safe from working mothers with wild teenage pasts.
Buncha craven, pencil-headed morons.
on
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We see this bullshit all the
We see this bullshit all the time here in DC with the local police. They patrol the nice neighborhoods, and arrest the guy selling dime bags. Meanwhile, crime runs rampant in the nastier parts of town.
Law enforcement and bureaucrats in general always go for the easy pickings. There is no threat in hassling poor Edna Borges. Chasing real criminals, well that's harder. (This is not to say that there aren't police and other officials who actually go after the real problems. They seem to be a minority, however, and definitely not the leadership.)
Witness the slow decay of a
Witness the slow decay of a society more interested in the rule of law, than the rightness of law.