With a stated mission “to protect the American people from …the entry
of terrorists and other criminals seeking to cross our Nation’s
borders” ICE achieved this unprecedented raid along with the raids in
Iowa and Texas and is showing its prowess in spending the $2.3 billion
dollar budget for “Detention and Removal Operations” for 2008.

The 600 presumed “terrorist and other criminals” detained were working
for Howard Industries which employs 4,000 workers in the tiny town of
Laurel, Mississippi.  Their stated earnings averaged  $18,000 a year
according to a local Laurel newspaper, a seemingly high income for
workers in Latin America, but slightly higher than the federal poverty
line in the U.S., where just the food expenditures for a household
border $4,000 a year.

The list of detainees included 106 individuals identified as “being
eligible for an alternative to detention based on humanitarian
reasons”, which meant being fitted an electronic bracelet for tracking,
just as the ones worn by mothers detained less than a month ago in
Norristown, PA.   Adding to its image of humane and unbiased propriety
ICE employs a Hispanic spokeswoman, her name is Barbara Gonzalez.

Enrolled for years in the federal verification program to detect
workers with irregular backgrounds, Howard Industries interestingly put
up a billboard a week before the day of the raid saying it was hiring
workers for the entire gamut of jobs it offered. Coincidentally none of
Howard Industries executives were detained.

The Associated Press reported the existence of “simmering tensions”
between union bosses and immigrants, because the latter were getting
more overtime and supervisory positions.

“Fear Runs Rampant in Hispanic Community” and “Fear Grips Immigrants”
are just a couple of the newspaper headlines speaking of ICE’s great
success in valiantly combating supposed “terrorist and other
criminals”.

Staged early in 2005, Republicans in the House of Representatives and
the Bush administration began to wield the issue of immigration as a
successful weapon to profoundly divide the American electorate and
intently to distract them from the more corrosive issues of a failing
economy and the preposterous war in Iraq.  The show will continue, ever
stronger until the Presidential elections in November.

Carefully planned, the infrastructure and the funds –close to $8
billion dollars- are in place to carry out the largest attempt in
American history to persecute the very cheap and disposable immigrant
labor America lured to fuel the growth of its own economy.