ICE gets one right in NC

Positive feedback from an immigration raid in NC… let’s hope these people (ICE) keep doing their jobs instead of pretending there isn’t an invasion underway as they’ve been doing for so long.

Scared Smithfield workers stay home

TAR HEEL — The 21 Smithfield Packing Co. employees arrested by immigration officials while they worked Wednesday are in the process of being deported.

The 20 men and one woman arrested were moved Thursday from the Mecklenburg County Jail to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., nearly 700 miles from Tar Heel.

Meanwhile, church officials within the region’s Hispanic community and spokespeople with the United Food & Commercial Workers union said the workers’ families didn’t know where they were and other immigrant workers were terrified of more arrests.

Perhaps they’d be best off packing their bags and heading south?

Production at the plant was substantially diminished Thursday as workers stayed away.

You’re breaking my heart.

“There are hundreds of immigrant families who will have to decide, ‘Do I show up to work (Friday) and risk being arrested by immigration?’” said Eduardo Pena, a spokesman for the union, which became an unofficial hub of information for workers Thursday, he said.

Incredible. Illegal immigrants giving interviews via the union that knows they’re illegal, and still represents them to employers. Bring back Jimmy Hoffa and the mob – at least then we knew what we were dealing with.

Now let’s see if this story is followed by one that tells us how many legal citizens formerly on welfare are now able to find work; like last week in Georgia.

Yes, I’m an optimist.

Hey, look… ICE at work in California, too! Nice to see them earning their pay for a change. And can someone find a bonus for the guy/gal who thinks up the names for these operations? “Operation Return to Sender” is pretty funny, not to mention appropriate.

This guy is breaking my heart, too:

We hadn’t seen anything like this here before, and it came as a shock,” said Antonio Bernabe, a community worker who runs a day labor program at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Day labor program – what do you want to bet he doesn’t check his “employees” for legal residence?
Hadn’t seen anything like this, but damned sure should have.

And this statement pretty well sums up the sad state of immigration law enforcement in the United States… at least up until now, and hopefully an accurate prediction for the future.

“We used to feel secure here,” Nicaraguan electrician Manuel Salomon told Reuters as he sipped coffee in a Mexican bakery in the city. “But it looks like that honeymoon is over.”