{"id":9349,"date":"2006-12-15T10:40:34","date_gmt":"2006-12-15T15:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9349.html"},"modified":"2006-12-15T10:40:34","modified_gmt":"2006-12-15T15:40:34","slug":"operation-wagon-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/operation-wagon-train\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Operation Wagon Train’"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the middle of December, it’s been a surprisingly busy news week, but I think “Operation Wagon Train” has been seriously underreported. Shakespeare’s Sister emailed me about this<\/a> yesterday and she’s right; this new Homeland Security crackdown<\/a> is unwarranted, excessive, and frankly, kind of scary.<\/p>\n

Federal agents targeting illegal immigrants raided meatpacking plants in six states yesterday, arresting hundreds of workers on the uncommon charge of identity theft and shutting down the world’s second-largest meat processing company for much of the day.
\nAbout 1,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with search warrants entered plants owned by Swift & Co., of Greeley, Colo., charging that “large numbers” of workers illegally assumed the identities of U.S. citizens or legal residents by using their Social Security numbers to get work, ICE officials said.<\/p>\n

Company and union officials said agents, some dressed in riot gear, locked down six beef- and pork-processing plants early in the morning, segregating workers into groups of citizens and non-citizens after questioning. Some illegal workers were bused to detention facilities hours away, labor officials said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The operation, dubbed “Operation Wagon Train,” was characterized as combating identity theft, not routine immigration violations. Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for ICE, said that “the signal we’re intending to send here is, ‘We’re serious about work site enforcement, and those individuals who steal identities of U.S. citizens will not escape action from us.'”<\/p>\n

It turns out, DHS had identified 170 identity-fraud suspects to apprehend, but chose to round up thousands of additional workers, just in case<\/a> some of them were involved as well.<\/p>\n

First, identity theft turned out to be a red herring. Second, in the process of executing this little adventure, DHS lost all<\/i> sense of perspective. And third, no one seems to understand exactly why Operation Wagon Train was launched in the first place.
\n
\nIn one of the crackdowns, for example, federal agents identified suspects based on skin color<\/a>, and ended up apprehending U.S. citizens who had done nothing wrong. In<\/a> other<\/a> instances<\/a>, parents wrapped up in the raids were separated from their children, even infants.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, we’re talking about the single-largest worksite-enforcement operation in the history of the United States. All because of alleged identity theft? Not exactly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to DHS’ own tally, only 65 of the 1,282 arrests were for criminal violations, including identity-theft related crimes. That means that over 1,200 of the people arrested had no connection to any identity theft rings, and were guilty only of run-of-the-mill immigration violations. That didn’t temper the agency’s rhetoric. […]<\/p>\n

“[H]undreds of these illegal aliens may have illegally assumed the identities of U.S. citizens,” the press release goes on the explain, “and improperly used their Social Security numbers and other identity documents in order to gain employment at Swift facilities.” Hundreds? A couple dozen, maybe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of this leads to a fairly obvious, but hard to answer, question: what was the point<\/a> of launching Operation Wagon Train?<\/p>\n

DHS arrested workers who came from stable, working-class neighborhoods. Their kids were enrolled in schools. The communities are reported to be ripped apart by the raids; in some, the local authorities refused to help the feds. In some cases state authorities intervened to demand DHS behave better.<\/p>\n

What’s the monetary cost of mounting the biggest raid on immigrants in U.S. history? What’s going to be the cost to the communities affected? What is the cost that will be borne by state and local governments?<\/p>\n

And most importantly, who is served by raids that by any measure failed to achieve their stated goal, and at such great expense?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The election season is over, it’s approaching the holiday season, and there’s no current legislation (or even negations to write legislation) on the table.<\/p>\n

So what on earth is going on here? A massive, multi-state raid to nab a few dozen identity thieves? Huh?<\/p>\n

I often find Bush administration decision making mysterious, but this is just insane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the middle of December, it’s been a surprisingly busy news week, but I think “Operation Wagon Train” has been seriously underreported. Shakespeare’s Sister emailed me about this yesterday and she’s right; this new Homeland Security crackdown is unwarranted, excessive, and frankly, kind of scary. Federal agents targeting illegal immigrants raided meatpacking plants in six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}