New York Times Editorial: Detained and Abused
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: July 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01sat2.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
One toxic remnant of one of the Bush administration’s failed wars — the one on illegal immigrants — is immigration detention. Wanting to appear tough, Bush officials cobbled together, at great speed and expense, a network of federal centers, state and county lockups and private, for-profit prisons. They needed lots of beds to warehouse the tens of thousands of people its raiders and local police were flushing out of the shadows.
The results were ugly. As we learned from reports on the secretive system, particularly those by Nina Bernstein in The Times, detainees were locked up and forgotten. They were denied access to lawyers and their families. They languished, sickened and died without medical attention.
On Tuesday, the National Immigration Law Center issued the first comprehensive report on abuses in a system that holds about 30,000 on any given day and more than 300,000 a year. It found “substantial and pervasive violations” — ignored for years — of the government’s own minimal monitoring requirements.
The next day, immigrant advocates issued a report containing the testimonies of detainees in a privately run detention center in rural Basile, La., where immigrants are waging the latest of several hunger strikes to get their grievances resolved. They say they have pleaded for access to medicine, lawyers, their families and basic information about their cases. They lack underwear and soap. Rats, spiders, flies and filth are rampant.
Sadly, President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security rejected a petition in federal court to enact legally enforceable standards for the treatment of immigrant detainees. Instead, the administration is sticking with a Bush-era system that relies in part on private contractors for quality control, even though those outside monitors are often former federal immigration agents.
Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have introduced bills to force the department to adopt legally enforceable rules, with real penalties, for detention centers. Mr. Obama and his homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, did not create the system, nor is six months enough to take it apart. But at some point that work must begin.
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These politicians voted Against the Nathan Deal Amendment, that would Prevent Health Care Benefits to Illegal Aliens. Simply put--it's not their BLOODY MONEY! So what! Do they care if taxpayers have to foot the behemoth bill, for anybody who snubs our laws and enters a sovereign country called America? The nationwide parasites are --CHEAP LABOR--businesses who could care less, because they pile up enormous profits. The corporate hierarchy have been having a field day--FOR DECADES. A foreign national gets hurt, their service manager or whoever the underling is, drives the maimed person and relinquishes any responsibility by dumping them on the emergency hospital entranceway. BINGO! nothing to pay!
Perhaps Americans should find some old shoddy clothes, no shave, no haircut and enter every emergency room in our country in the millions? Speak a lot of gibberish and carry no identification with a small splinter in their finger, a touch of a fever or any minor condition. By federal law the hospital will have an emergency on a--EMERGENCY. I am afraid Americans have been Lemmings going over a proverbial cliff, since who knows when? We just keep paying and paying even more to the IRS, to support--ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Try getting free health care in any other country, other than societies in the European Union? A FAT CHANCE! We are literary being taxed to death, to give welfare to the business overlords. These legislators have already tried to weaken E-Verify, local police action 287(g) and now unwinding the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli enforcement law--which worked, but again was never enforced.
Even our Democrats who are trying to engineer health care for every American---INCLUDED 20 PLUS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR LARGE FAMILIES. Here are 29 Judas Iscariot's, who sold the American people out--for a lot more than 13 pieces of silver? HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR. Capps (D-CA), Eshoo (D-CA), Harman (D-CA), Matsui (D-CA), McNerney (D-CA), Waxman (D-CA), DeGette (D-CO), Murphy (D-CT), Castor (D-FL), Rush (D-IL), Schakowsky (D-IL), Braley (D-IA), Sarbanes (D-MD), Markey (D-MA), Dingell (D-MI), Stupak (D-MI), Pallone (D-NJ), Weiner (D-NY), Butterfield (D-NC), Space (D-OH), Sutton (D-OH), Doyle (D-PA), Gordon (D-TN), Gonzalez (D-TX), Green (D-TX),Welch (D-VT), Christensen (D-VI), Inslee (D-WA) and Baldwin (D-WI). I'm afraid I would be banned if I used the right epithet, when leaving a comment for these so called lawmakers?
These are the betrayers of--ALL--taxpayers. These 29 traitors gave illegal immigrants the right to pilfer your billfold and purse, while they sit in their Washington office collecting their 6 figure salaries. REMEMBER THEM AND THROW THEM OUT! DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? Learn uncorrupted facts at NUMBERSUSA.
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