Returning to their roots....

Alabama brings back slavery for Latinos: Here's how: pass a draconian immigration law, lock up 'illegals' in private prisons, then get the new inmates to work in the fields

More on our own concentration camps

Private prisons run for profit and taking all comers. Locking up innocents with no access to lawyers or hearings. What country does this sound like?:

America's detention system for immigrants has mushroomed in the last decade, a costly building boom that was supposed to sweep up criminals and ensure that undocumented immigrants were quickly shown the door.

Instead, an Associated Press computer analysis of every person being held on a recent Sunday night shows that most did not have a criminal record and many were not about to leave the country _ voluntarily or via deportation.

An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25.

The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.

Nearly 10,000 had been in custody longer than 31 days _ the average detention stay that ICE cites as evidence of its effective detention management.

Especially tough bail conditions are exacerbated by disregard or bending of the rules regarding how long immigrants can be detained.

Based on a 2001 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, ICE has about six months to deport or release immigrants after their case is decided. But immigration lawyers say that deadline is routinely missed. In the system snapshot provided to the AP, 950 people were in that category.

So when did the illegal alien influx slow down?

That we have workers from India treated like this?:

More than 100 Indians who moved to the US for jobs have marched hundreds of miles to Washington DC in protest at being forced to work "like slaves".

The men plan to take their protest to the Indian ambassador.

The men say recruiters tricked them into paying up to $20,000 each for a new life in the US, where they then had to work in exploitative conditions.

The Mississippi firm that employed them, Signal International, has denied they were mistreated.

It says the men were paid wages above the local average and given good accommodation.

It accuses the recruitment firm of deceiving the Indians and has now ended its contract.

It is also demanding the recruiters return the fees the men paid them.

Apparently businesses are missing their yearly dose of cheap exploitable labor...

We have undocumented workers, recent 'illegal aliens' and those who have lived in this country for decades in 'detention centers' being run by private companies where the people in these prisons have no legal recourse, no voice, no ability to see their American-born children. What is happening there?

Why am I getting continual hits on my 'Slavery is good' posts?

WTF?

Blackwater withdraws military base project near San Diego

It's not a retreat, it's a withdrawal:

Blackwater Worldwide officials have announced they are pulling their application to build a training center on an 824-acre site in the East County community of Potrero.

The North Carolina-based company dropped off a letter to the county planning department today notifying officials of their decision not to pursue plans for the project on a former chicken and cattle ranch.

“Although our project would have brought a great benefit to San Diego County, – providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with access to low-cost superior training facilities while bringing much-needed jobs to the area – the proposed site does not meet our business objectives at this time,” states the letter from Blackwater vice president Brian Bonfiglio.

Bonfiglio said noise tests the company conducted at the site did not meet county standards, and the cost of reducing the noise was too expensive. He said Blackwater had spent well over $1 million in its effort to get government approval for the site.

[snip]

Bonfiglio said opposition to the project played no role in the company's decision to withdraw the project.

Opponents of the project were stunned and pleased to hear the news.

That's wonderful, but now we don't know where they are going to pop up next and what kind of plans they'll have while they have White House protection. Border patrol with a shoot-to-kill mandate? Detention Centers for citizens as well as illegal immigrants where no lawyers ever set foot? Training and infiltrating local police with training for martial law?

To prevent the cancer from metastasizing we have to be always alert to what this megabillion dollar company wants to do next.

crossposted at SteveAudio

So... what would you do if you were caught up in a sweep

By ICE and not allowed to provide proof you were an American citizen?

It's happening now. Here. In the United States.

Officials with ICE, the federal agency that oversees deportations, maintain that such cases are isolated because agents are required to obtain sufficient evidence that someone is an illegal immigrant before making an arrest. However, they don't track the number of U.S. citizens who are detained or deported.

"We don't want to detain or deport U.S. citizens," said Ernestine Fobbs, an ICE spokeswoman. "It's just not something we do."

While immigration advocates agree that the agents generally release detainees before deportation in clear-cut cases, they said that ICE sometimes ignores valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to ship out more illegal immigrants.

Proving citizenship is especially difficult for the poor, mentally ill, disabled or anyone who has trouble getting a copy of his or her birth certificate while behind bars.

[snip]

The number of U.S. citizens who are swept up in the immigration system is a small fraction of the number of illegal immigrants who are deported, but in the last several years immigration lawyers report seeing more detainees who turn out to be U.S. citizens.

The attorneys said the chances of mistakes are growing as immigration agents step up sweeps in the country and state and local prisons with less experience in immigration matters screen more criminals on behalf of ICE.

ICE's Fobbs said agents move as quickly as possible to check stories of people who claim they're American citizens. But she said that many of the cases involve complex legal arguments, such as whether U.S. citizenship is derived from parents, which an immigration judge has to sort out.

And just where are these people being held as the immigration agents slowly plod through the bureaucracy? Where are these people's small children when both parents are swept up? What are they doing to these people when there is no oversight and no legal remedy?



WTF.

Update 1/26: Distributorcap in comments noted this sounds like the Nuremberg 1935 law. Googling Wikipedia gave me this:

The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. They used a pseudoscientific basis for racial discrimination against Jews. People with 4 German grandparents (white circles on the chart) were of "German blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".

Exactly.

Will they have 'Arbeit macht frei' above the gates?

Bryan Finoki of Subtopia is keeping track of the huge complex being built in Guantanamo:

As it turns out the proposal to build warehousing structures for interdicted refugees in the event of a ‘hypothetical Caribbean boat crisis’ is already well under way. Even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates shot down a costly proposal for a $125m Military Commissions Courthouse earlier this year, the Miami Herald, who has been doing a good job of keeping watch on Guantanamo’s base development, says progress is being made on the migrant detention installation with some lucrative contracts in the works.
It appears the Bush administration has not only been preparing for what’s being referred to as a “theoretical humanitarian relief mission” by developing a sheltering scheme capable of accommodating 10,000 people – for those either “fleeing a political crisis” or “a natural disaster” – but there is another second wave proposal (no pun intended) that is looking to build out even larger facilities for an additional 35,000 potential migrants.

10,000 people? 35,000 people? Why are we building concentration camps in Cuba as well as 'detention centers' in the U.S.? What is our government getting ready to do?