Immigration Raid
On Feb. 8 there was an ICE raid on a manufacturer in Lindon, here in Utah County. There are some pretty draconian punishments being threatened in this case. Friday morning (Feb. 15) I submitted the following opinion piece to The Daily Herald, a local newspaper; I don’t know yet if they’re going to run it.
Immigration Enforcement Threatens American Liberties
The immigration raid on Lindon manufacturer Universal Industrial Sales earlier this month is symptomatic of the growing authoritarian spirit in this country. Over 100 armed men descended on the plant and arrested 57 workers. The human resources director is facing charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. The company itself has lost over half its employees and is facing a ruinous $5 million in fines. Numerous families have been deprived of their fathers and left without any income.
Yet nobody has answered one simple question: who is the victim? HR director Alex Urrutia-Garcia faces a possible prison term that is nearly twice the average sentence for rape and approaches the average sentence for murder, in addition to crushing, impossible-to-pay fines. For what? Not for any act of violence against another human being. Not for any act of theft. Not for defrauding another. His life is about to be ruined simply because Congress declared that he must serve as an unpaid immigration enforcer, and Federal officials are displeased with his performance in this capacity.
Put simply, Urrutia-Garcia is being punished for being insufficiently obedient to our masters in Washington.
The same holds for the 57 workers arrested. They came to this state looking for work, not for a handout. Many of them are responsible and caring fathers just trying to take care of their families. They were not arrested for any crime committed against an actual human being. They were arrested for failing to get government permission before exercising their natural rights to live wherever they can purchase or rent a domicile, and work for whomever wishes to pay them. They behaved as free men—and in today’s America there is no surer way to provoke the wrath of officialdom.
I have noticed a disturbingly authoritarian mind-set in many of the people who have commented on this case. They display great moral indignation against those who disobey the government’s edicts—as if government officials were deities whose pronouncements defined right and wrong. They cry that it matters not whether the law is good or bad, popular or unpopular—the law must be enforced!
Why?
What good came from this enforcement action? In what way has it improved the life of any human being? I see no benefits, only harms. Martin Snow, founder and owner of UIS, is seeing the work of 30 years destroyed. His customers are losing a supplier they describe as reliable, top-notch, and willing to go the extra mile. Alex Urrutia-Garcia may lose everything he owns and the next 20 years of his life. Fathers have been separated from their families. Families have lost their source of income and are being thrown onto the welfare rolls.
The bigger picture is that aggressive immigration enforcement is destroying the liberties of all Americans. It used to be that Americans didn’t need to prove they had government permission to work before they could get a job, but the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 changed that. The Real ID Act of 2005, aimed at controlling illegal immigration, is creating a de facto national ID card. Once in place it will enable routine tracking, monitoring, and regulation of Americans’ movements and activities. This is the kind of control that communist and fascist regimes have only dreamed of.
And don’t suppose that just because you’re a native of this country that you have nothing to fear from immigration authorities. Thomas Warziniack was imprisoned for weeks because officials thought he was an illegal Russian immigrant; it took intervention from a U.S. senator before his family was even allowed to prove he was born in Minnessota. Immigration lawyers report seeing increasing numbers of such cases. Those are the ones lucky enough to get a lawyer: prisoners accused of immigration violations don’t have a right to an attorney.
None of this should surprise anyone. Our country’s long borders and Mexico’s ailing economy make effective enforcement of immigration restrictions almost impossible. Nothing less than a police state could fully enforce U.S. immigration statutes. Is that what we want?
I’m currently seeing what the possibilities are for organizing some sort of protest in support of UIS, Alex Urrutia-Garcia, and the workers arrested.