The cost of criminalizing immigrants part 2

A few weeks back I posted a well-done NYT piece about the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and the money being made off their imprisonment by private prison firms.

Here is another angle on the story, telling the stories of U.S. attorneys and local state officials who are bearing the brunt of Bush's policy to criminalize undocumented immigrants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/12prosecute.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink


Resources that were once directed to going after crime syndicates and drug traffickers are now directed to nailing immigrants crossing the border. Justice department crime fighters are demoralized, and the border states are overwhelmed taking on what the Feds used to do.

Incredible that President Bush in his last press conference talked about the unfairness of the Republican party being saddled with the anti-immigrant label. Here is his comment, taken straight from the White House transcript:

And the problem with the outcome of the initial round of the debate was that some people said, well, Republicans don't like immigrants. Now, that may be fair or unfair, but that's what -- that's the image that came out.

And, you know, if the image is we don't like immigrants, then there's probably somebody else out there saying, well, if they don't like the immigrants, they probably don't like me, as well. And so my point was, is that our party has got to be compassionate and broad-minded.

Sometimes I wonder if he just doesn't get that he heads Homeland Security and the Justice Dept. These policies of raids, separating families, and imprisonment were created under HIS watch. Remarkable that the President doesn't grasp this isn't about image or perceptions or feelings (of immigrants or their advocates), but rather about cold hard facts. Data. Number of people detained in raids. People who die while in ICE custody. Policy decisions and actions taken by the executive branch. His executive branch. Remarkable that we have a President lacking in understanding what his own administration is doing on the ground. Either that or just will not accept responsibilty for his own policy decisions. My hunch is the latter. Whether it is Katrina or the non-existent WMD, his approach is to blame his staff for bad intelligence or poor decisions. It's never his fault.