Author Archives: Mary Turck

This is what democracy looks like. Fifty people at the table—Barbara, Yusef, Pablo, Anne, Yasim, Antonia, Martha, Ricky, Woli, Iztchel. New immigrants and old immigrants, representing all parts of the world. New immigrants tonight speak with accents of Liberia, Mexico, Russia, Ecuador, Somalia and more.

Tonight we gather, representing a few dozen organizations or ourselves as individuals. AFFIRM—the Alliance for Fair Federal Immigration Reform of Minnesota—has convened this community meeting to share concerns about immigration issues and, possibly, to find common ground and a way to work together.

One woman brings her niece and granddaughter, a few couples come together, a few more people bring little children. Many teenagers are here—tonight’s discussion on immigration hits close to home for them.

D— is a senior in high school. She wants to go to college next year. She has gone through high school in Minnesota, but she does not have immigration documents.

The Minnesota Dream Act, now before the legislature, could make it possible for many of them to go to college. The federal DREAM Act, now re-introduced in Congress, could provide them a path to legalization and citizenship.

W— does not say what country she came from, only that she was tortured, a lot, before she got out many years ago. And that she values her association with the Minnesota Center for Victims of Torture.

R— sells real estate, is nearing completion of a B.A. in business at Metro State and plans to continue for an MBA at St. Thomas. We joke about how many houses he will have to sell to pay for that tuition. He tells me that 70% of the Mexican immigrants to Minnesota are, like himself, originally from the Mexican state of Morelos.

G— insists that the state demographer undercounts Russian immigrants, saying there are only 15,000 Russian immigrants in Minnesota. He is sure the real number is 50,000, and wants to do something about the undercounting.

Another woman brings her concern about foreign professionals to the table, saying that Minnesota will not allow foreign doctors to serve as interns or residents here, though other states do so. She wants a way for immigrants who are professionals to become licensed and work in their fields.

M— wants a path to legalization for her husband. She is a U.S. citizen. He is not.

Another woman raises concerns about her Liberian-Minnesotan community, who now face an end to the Temporary Protected Status under which they have been living for years. Now the U.S. government has decreed that Liberia is no longer dangerous and that they must return by October, abandoning homes, jobs, and families here.

So many people, ages, jobs, nationalities. One hope—to continue to live together as Minnesotans.

Every year, 600,000 people apply to become citizens of the United States. To become a citizen, immigrants first have to live here for a number of years (usually five years). Then they must apply for citizenship, demonstrate their ability to speak and read and write English, and pass a test on U.S. government and history. (There are a few exceptions to residence and testing requirements, such as adopted children.)

This year, the federal government is making it harder for immigrants to become citizens. First, it changed the written test to make it more difficult. Now, it proposes to increase the application fee from $330 to $595. (And that’s only for the application—fingerprint fees and other charges increase the total cost even more.)

The increase in naturalization (citizenship) application fees is only one of many proposed immigration fee increases. The fee for adjustment of status, to become a permanent legal resident, will go up from $325 to $905. Other fees also increase, by an average of 66 percent.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, “Naturalization of immigrants in the United States brings significant benefits for the country. First, obtaining citizenship allows immigrants to participate fully in the civic life of the country by permitting them to vote in elections, run for office, and work in many government jobs. Further, naturalization is a powerful symbolic gesture of commitment to the United States. In taking the oath of citizenship, naturalizing immigrants pledge to support the values and laws of the United States and renounce their allegiance to any other country. Naturalizing citizens also commit to serving on a jury if called to do so. Further, in order to naturalize, immigrants must learn a basic level of English and study U.S. history and government. The ability to naturalize provides a strong incentive for immigrants to deepen their integration into the country by improving their English and learning more about their country of residence.”

Refugees and new immigrants typically have lower incomes. The fee increases hit them especially hard, as they struggle to learn English, support themselves and their families, and become part of their new country. The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) is one of the immigrant advocacy organizations opposing fee hikes. SEARAC warns that, “The increased fees may further prolong the citizenship process for many whose incomes are dependent on their attainment of citizenship such as elders and disabled refugees who receive SSI benefits. The inability to obtain their citizenship after the allotted timeframe will result in the termination of their benefits.”

The fee hikes do not have to go through Congress. They are set by administrative regulations. But Congress—and individuals—do have a voice in the administrative process. The fees were proposed February 1, beginning a sixty-day public comment period. Along with SEARAC, the National Immigration Forum is urging people to voice their concerns about the fee increases. To comment on the fee increases, email OSComments@dhs.gov. The e-mail message should refer to the docket number of the regulation—DHS Docket # USCIS-2006-0044. (For more information about the comment process, go to http://www.regulations.gov.)

One mother was reunited with her baby. One father was released from jail to undergo the testing that might make it possible for him to donate a kidney to his (U.S. citizen) son. But most of the rest of the 230 families whose fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters were arrested in Worthington on December 12 are gone. Many have been shipped out of the country. Most of the rest are still in custody, far from Worthington and far from Minnesota.

On February 14, the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota reported on the heroic work done by attorneys from not only their office but also from the Detention Project (ILCM, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Centro Legal) and the private immigration bar and volunteers. The stories were still heart-wrenching, and showed more clearly than ever the inhumane, broken system that is U.S. immigration law.

The thirteen-year-old girl, left without parents when her mother was shipped to Mexico and her father disappeared. Days later, he was found in detention in Atlanta.

The twelve- and thirteen-year-old U.S. citizen children, the only safe members of their families, who had to look for missing relatives, shop for groceries, seek help.

The parents, trying to get passports for their U.S. citizen children, so they could take their sons and daughters away from the towns where they were born and raised and go to school to return to a “homeland” that offers no opportunity for parents or children.

The convoluted laws benefit predators who target immigrant families. “Within the first days, we heard five stories of people who had paid notary publics $3,000 to do the paperwork for them, in full belief that this would get them legal status,” reported Cynthia Anderson. “And, of course, it didn’t. People fly in, even from other states and charge people money to do nothing.”

Even worse, people’s desperate attempts to get jobs and support their families, here and “back home,” get them in even deeper difficulty. A 1976 law means that anyone who uses false documents to claim legal immigration is barred from immigrating legally in the future. That means that someone who uses another person’s birth certificate to get a job—even with that person’s permission—is barred from legal immigration in the future.

For people who try to stay within the law, the news is bad. ILCM director John Keller tells the story:

Take, for example, a married couple. The husband is a U.S. citizen and the wife is undocumented. Even though the law allows him to file a petition for her, the “devil is in the details,” as they say. As a lawyer, I must inform them that under our current laws and system, the processing of the paperwork will probably take one and one-half years. Not so bad, they think. Wait, there’s more … I have to tell them that after the first one and one-half years, since she entered the U.S. without a visa, she will have to return to her home country and wait, in a worst case scenario, up to ten years, without being able to legally return to her husband and children. Eleven and one-half years for a U.S. citizen to legally immigrate his wife. This is the legal process we want millions to go through? At this point, the U.S. citizen usually says: ‘Well, wait, but we have a child, or two children, born in the United States. Surely, that will help … the government doesn’t expect us to separate the little children from their mother … does it?’ That is a difficult question to have to answer. I tell them that the government lets you choose if your U.S. citizen children will separate from you or from her. They could always go with her.

Let me be clear. The current laws and their interpretations do not promote strong, stable, loving families—in many cases, the laws destroy them. A healthy nation, Minnesota, and our Minnesota communities depend on healthy, stable, strong families and our immigration laws must be reformed to that end.

A resolution introduced in the Minnesota House and Senate this week calls for Comprehensive Immigration Reform to promote family reunification and a path to legalization for hard-working immigrants in the United States, which only the U.S. Congress can pass. Illinois, Georgia and New York have passed similar resolutions.

The Minnesota legislature is considering a Commission on New Americans, which would study and recommend specific initiatives to keep Minnesota a strong and welcoming destination for immigrants, and to learn from success stories in Willmar, Pelican Rapids and Worthington, which have been strengthened by the arrival of new immigrants in their work forces and schools. (And it’s a bi-partisan issue—while Democratic Senators Mee Moua and Sandy Pappas have taken the lead on immigration legislation over the years, Republican State Representative Rod Hamilton of Mountain Lake is co-sponsoring the Commission legislation.)

“I don’t have insurance right now,” my friend admitted. “So I’m being really careful to eat right and exercise, and so far I’ve been lucky.” My friend is pushing 60, so her luck has to hold for a little more than five years. She can’t afford thousands of dollars a month to purchase a private health insurance policy and, given her age and health history, would have a really hard time getting coverage. She is one of many Minnesotans who make too much money for Minnesota Care but have no available employment-based health insurance coverage.

Today 383,000 Minnesotans, including 68,000 children remain uninsured. That’s no private health care insurance. No Medicare or Medicaid. No Minnesota Care. Nothing.

Minnesotans, though, fare better than the rest of the country. Across the United States, 47 million people live without health care insurance, including 9 million children.

Sunday I listened to State Senator Linda Berglin (DFL) and State Representative Paul Thissen (DFL) and Cal Ludeman, representing the Pawlenty administration, talk about health insurance at a public forum. Their earnest discussion was enough to make your eyes glaze over. Do we want 175% of poverty level or 200% of poverty level? Expanded section 125 pre-tax plans? Q-Care standards? Promotion of portability of health insurance coverage? It was enough to make your eyes glaze over. And nothing they said would help my friend.

“All over the place, people are refusing to take wages or cutting their hours so they can stay in Minnesota Care.” Senator Linda Berglin said. Minnesota Care has lots of problems, starting with a 26-page enrollment form that has to be filled out twice a year. Even so, it provides one of the few opportunities for sort-of-affordable health care for thousands of Minnesotans. Her health care legislation would do a lot to improve and expand Minnesota Care, and it should pass. But that is not enough.

We need a national health-care program. We need it now. We need it so badly that even Wal-Mart, AT&T, Intel, Kelly Service and other businesses have formed a coalition with SEIU and the Communication Workers of America to call for national, universal health care coverage.

Insurance companies are the least effective way to finance health care. They are the reason that the United States has the highest per-person health care cost in the world, and still doesn’t provide universal health care coverage.

Think about every dollar you spend on healthcare: one-third of it now goes to the insurance companies for their profits, their administration, their advertising, their lobbyists, so if we take that one-third that we’re now spending on spurious — we don’t need them, we don’t need the insurance companies –and that would cover literally everybody who is uncovered in the United States for a lot less money and provide for the kind of system that most countries in the world, most of the advanced countries in the world, enjoy. Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator of Healthcare-NOW!, speaking on Democracy Now, 2/9/07

Publicly-administered health care plans—like Medicare, which covers all people over the age of 65—deliver medical care at a lower cost than private health care insurance.

Publicly-funded, universal health care coverage is the right thing to do. People are suffering, people are dying because they cannot afford health care. The number of uninsured in the United states has risen by nine million since 2000.

Publicly-funded, universal health care coverage is good for business. It would cut employer costs far more than any tax break proposed by the Bush administration and it would help make U.S. business more competitive internationally. Think about it. Employers in countries with universal public health care do not pay any health insurance costs. That automatically lowers their labor costs.

This is not just a healthcare crisis, this is a business crisis. By next year, health benefit costs will exceed profits in the Fortune 500 companies, and if we look at companies like Starbucks, they’re spending more on health benefits than coffee beans. It’s no longer just a healthcare crisis, it’s an economic crisis. Jeanne Lambrew, Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an associate professor at George Washington University, speaking on Democracy Now, 1/9/07.

Minnesota can and does do a lot of good work on health care, but it cannot do the whole job. What we need is UNIVERSAL, publicly-funded and administered health care coverage. That can only happen if it happens nationwide.

More than a dozen legislators joined farmers, friends and supporters at a family farm breakfast this morning, feasting on locally-raised food and listening to speakers talk about the legislative support needed to sustain Minnesota’s farms and food system for the future. The Land Stewardship Project, now in its 25th year, sponsored the breakfast to promote sustainable farming and advocate for family farmers and local control of food systems.

Family farmers, from beginners to veterans, brought their eggs and bacon, milk and oatmeal to the table, along with familiar messages of protecting clean water, soil conservation, minimizing or eliminating chemical inputs, and caring for the land.

Cheap food prices and overflowing store shelves are hiding the true environmental and social costs of our food and agriculture system—rapid erosion and degradation of soil, the chemical contamination and depletion of our water, the loss of genetic diversity, the poisoning of wildlife and destruction of habitat, the loss of family farmers and impoverishment of rural communities.

The good news is that we now have an alternative. A growing number of farmers are choosing to work with nature, and are adopting farming practices that build up the soil, reduce runoff, create habitat for wildlife, treat livestock humanely and best of all, produce safe, wholesome food. But the most environmentally sound farming practices in the world mean little if they don’t provide a good income for the farmer.

[If you want to learn more about buying food from local, sustainable farmers, click here.]

Alternative energy sources were today’s big news. “The next generations of ethanol plants are going to be cellulose-based,” according to Land Stewardship. “This provides real opportunity for more perennial cropping systems that benefit the environment while producing income from the marketplace.”

Increasing markets for ethanol helped push corn prices to four dollars a bushel during the past year, but corn is not the answer for sustainable energy, according to speakers at the breakfast. Switch grass is a better, more efficient energy source than corn, but mixed prairie grasses are even better. Besides, mixed prairie grasses are a perennial crop, less expensive to raise and easier on soil and water resources than corn.

Representative Al Juhnke talked about the “Minnesota model” of cooperative ownership of ethanol plants. Minnesota can continue to provide a national model for sustainable energy, if we support research and development of alternative ethanol sources (such as switch grass and mixed prairie grasses), wind power, and continuing cooperative ownership and local control.

Published in AMERICAS.ORG, September 2006

The four international observers came to watch and film as displaced Colombian families occupied an abandoned, government-owned slaughterhouse. Instead, they were seized and taken away by police, accused of organizing the peaceful protest and paraded before television news cameras. Eleven hours later, the Spanish, Italian and U.S. citizens were released, with police officials warning that their “life histories were being analyzed to proceed with their deportation.”

The four, who work for the International Peace Observatory, consider their arrest “a diversion by the authorities to take attention away from internally displaced persons and the violence the state was planning to commit against this civilian population.” Far from organizing the protest, the four arrived after police had surrounded the 300 internally displaced persons, and watched as police gassed and beat the men, women and children.

An IPO observer reported: “ I myself saw police ripping children from their parents and striking indiscriminately against a defenseless population. … In the end, when over 100 persons were locked up in the city jail, three ambulances were needed to transport the gravely wounded. One man was disappeared for two days – he eventually “re-appeared” in a small town in the outskirts of Bogotá. … There were hundreds of riot police, an obvious disproportionate measure in and of itself. The authorities simply refused to address the legitimate needs of the internally displaced population to such basic rights as housing, food, health, and education.”

The three hundred protesters are victims of Colombia’s hidden war, a war usually unseen or perhaps simply ignored by the rest of the world. Like the “low-intensity” wars in Central America during the 1980s, Colombia’s war drives people from their homes as it destroys communities. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees reports three three million internally displaced persons in Colombia, a population of internal war refugees second only to Sudan.

According to the United Nations, Colombia has enlightened laws guaranteeing help to these refugees, but does not follow those laws. Peaceful occupations of property have been an effective means of pressuring the government. Before their attempt to occupy the slaughterhouse, the September 4 protesters had issued a statement detailing the government’s failure to fulfill an agreement signed in 2005, in which the government promised to provide for the displaced people’s health, education, housing, humanitarian aid, accompaniment and safe return to their places of origin. The 2005 agreement was the fruit of a takeover of vacant houses in another part of Bogotá.

The Colombian Constitutional Court in 2004 denounced the government’s failure to aid displaced persons, reporting that 92 percent of displaced persons were unable to meet their basic needs, 80 percent were indigent, 63.5 percent lacked decent housing, 49 percent lacked access to public services, and 23 percent of children under the age of six were malnourished. According to the U.N. World Food Program, mortality rates for displaced persons are six times higher than the national average. Leaders and members of displaced communities are frequent targets of death threats and violence.

International observers are usually safer than Colombia’s internally displaced persons, indigenous communities, teachers, union leaders, journalists or human rights workers. Military and paramilitary soldiers violate human rights, kidnap and even kill with impunity. In just the past few weeks, a university professor was taken from his home in Bogotá by several armed men and shot to death, a human rights leader in the Valle de Cauca department was kidnapped and remains missing, riot police attacked an anti-war march with tear gas and water cannons, the army attacked a mining town, soldiers killed a local resident in the Arenal municipality … the list goes on and on.

On September 7, an Amnesty International report criticized the Colombian government for giving a “green light” to attacks on human rights activists. According to the report, “The official strategy against human rights campaigners seems to be three folded: government authorities publicly question their legitimacy, mount unfounded legal processes and fail to bring to justice those who commit the attacks, even when evidence is widely available.”

The harassment and public denunciation of the International Peace Observatory team on September 4 certainly fit that description. “ As far as what happened to the members of the International Peace Observatory (IPO),” writes one member, “the situation is delicate. We were publicly threatened with deportation, and accused of committing illegal acts and organizing the action. With the active complicity of the mass media, Colonel Yamil Moreno Arias, an instructor for the School of the Americas in 1994 and involved in the judicial persecution of the San José de Apartado Peace Community as the commander for the National Police in Uraba, went before the cameras and slandered us excessively. All of our faces were plastered on the afternoon news bulletins. This of course on a certain level raises the level of risk for all.”

According to Sofia Nordenmark, Amnesty International human rights defenders coordinator, “Attacks against human rights activists in Colombia have a double purpose: they aim to silence individuals and prevent others from continuing with their work.”

The International Peace Observatory team has not yet been silenced, and intends to continue. “ While national and international attention has focused on us and on the absurd tale invented by the police, hundreds of homeless families continue to go hungry,” they say. “We remain firm in our decision to continue to accompany communities as they strive for a truly democratic and just nation.”

Mary Turck is the editor of Connection to the Americas and WWW.AMERICAS.ORG, for the Resource Center of the Americas, where this article first appeared. She can be reached at: mturck@americas.org

Published in the Connection to the Americas, November/December 2006

Torturing prisoners. Spying on political dissidents and religious minorities. Suspending constitutional protections. Infiltrating peace groups. Instituting a national identity card system. Restricting the rights of immigrants. Imprisoning more than two million people, making us number one in the world: the nation with the highest percentage of our population in prison.

Today, 230 years after colonial leaders rebelled against “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” the American Civil Liberties Union warns that Americans are suffering “serious setbacks in the protection of civil and political rights.” The descendants of the rebels who escaped the tyrannies of King George III have now virtually crowned King George II, and handed over our freedoms to his corrupt administration.

The Declaration of Independence was a powerful indictment listing specific violations of rights by King George III. The signers complained of a government “depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.” The 2006 Military Commissions Act gives King George II the same abusive powers, taking away the right of trial by jury for anyone accused of being an “unlawful enemy combatant.” That includes citizens as well as non-citizens, and anyone who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” The president determines who is covered by this law.

Habeas corpus protection was enshrined in common law even before the founding of the United States. The writ of habeas corpus is used to demand that a prisoner be brought before a judge and that the judge determine whether or not the person is legally detained. Under the Military Commissions Act, the prisoner has no right to habeas corpus, no right to a speedy trial, and no access to a court until after conviction.

In 1776, the colonists complained of King George III “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” King George II maintains a prison camp at Guantanamo, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Other prisoners are shipped to secret prison camps abroad or simply turned over to foreign governments for interrogation in a process called “extraordinary rendition.”

Torture

The U.S. Constitution, in the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, prohibits torture. International prohibitions on torture and cruel treatment abound, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Geneva Conventions.

King George II and his minions in Congress disagree. They insist on the government’s right to use “alternative interrogation methods.” These methods include waterboarding. Waterboarding involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet and then either submerging the head in water or pouring water over the head so the victim cannot breathe and believes that he or she is in imminent danger of drowning. When waterboarding was used in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, it was called the “ submarino.” In a 2005 Senate hearing, then-CIA director Porter Goss characterized waterboarding as a “professional interrogation technique.”

Other “alternative interrogation methods” approved under the reign of King George II include sleep deprivation, withholding of food, and prolonged detention at very cold temperatures. Murder and mutilation, however, are still forbidden. Although today “alternative interrogation methods” might be acceptable only for “unlawful enemy combatants” … or maybe for prisoners of war … or maybe for non-citizens, Once torture is approved for one kind of prisoner, no one is safe.

Patriot Act

Prisoners may be the most vulnerable to violations of human rights, but every person is at risk. The Patriot Act requires businesses (such as libraries and banks) to turn over information about individuals to the government, and prohibits them from telling anyone that the information has been turned over. “Sneak and peek” provisions allow secret searches of homes and businesses. Wiretaps and data mining routed through three “secret rooms” touch uncountable millions of people and transactions. And, even though the Patriot Act and its progeny made it much easier for the government to get warrants for searches or wiretaps, King George II insists that federal snoops have the right to conduct warrantless searches, without regard to the Fourth Amendment.

Illegal infiltration and spying tactics were used by the FBI, COINTELPRO and other intelligence agencies against civil rights organizations and the Black Panthers in the 1960s, against anti-war movements in the 1970s, against anti-intervention movements in the 1980s. Now they are back. (Or maybe they never really went away.) Today’s targets include everyone from Arab-American groups to student, anti-war, anti-globalization, animal rights and environmental activists.

Immigrants

During World War I, the U.S. government cracked down on anarchists, unionists, leftists – and immigrants. President Woodrow Wilson denounced “hyphenated Americans.” Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, with prison terms for anyone encouraging “disloyalty.” Some anarchists responded with bombs. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer organized a series of raids. The Palmer Raids collected data on all kinds of leftist organizations and also arrested at least 10,000 people. Immigrants were special targets for both arrest and mass deportations.

Today, prison construction is moving ahead in tandem with the other “anti-terrorist” and anti-immigrant measures. Early this year, a Halliburton subsidiary was awarded a $385 million contract to build detention centers to imprison “an unexpected influx of immigrants or to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” Not surprisingly, both immigrants and dissidents fear that they will become the inmates of the new prisons.

Today’s accelerated immigration enforcement includes raids and mass deportations across the country (see p. 15). Political rhetoric stigmatizes immigrants as criminal and disloyal, and characterizes border fences and increased enforcement as anti-terrorist measures.

Another law characterized as both an anti-terrorist and an immigration enforcement measure, the REAL ID Act, imposes stringent national standards for state drivers’ licenses. After May 2008, issuance of drivers’ licenses will require strictly-defined proofs of citizenship or immigration status and the licenses must include “a common machine-readable technology, with defined data elements.” Drivers’ licenses (or equivalent identification) will be required for entry into federal buildings and for airport security.

Solidarity and Resistance

Today the whole world is watching us, denouncing our government’s torture of prisoners, observing the erosion of our civil liberties and the due process of law. The revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib were only the beginning. Since then, Amnesty International has reported allegations of torture, ill-treatment and deaths of those held in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere.

For years we have leaned on heroes in other places. We have been inspired by the courage of human rights defenders in Colombia and Central America. We have drawn strength from the persistence of campesinos in Brazil and from the determination of union organizers in Mexico.

Now it is our turn to stand up – our turn to resist human rights violations by our own government. The whole world is watching – let’s give them some heroes to watch.

Mary Turck is the editor of the Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG.

The stories break your heart.

Maria, pregnant and due any day, taken away from the Swift plant in chains. The marks of the chains still visible on her pregnant stomach after her release. The terrified young woman, back at home, refuses to leave the house even for medical care for an infection, refuses to answer the telephone, to talk to people, to open her locked door.

You can send money for food, or diapers for the new baby, but Maria will be gone soon. The choices for undocumented workers are bleak: flee into the shadows, hiding and working in the United States or return to a homeland and jobs that pay not nearly enough to feed and house a family.  

The Lopez family. Mother cries herself to sleep and wakes up, still crying. Her husband worked at Swift, supporting the family, and he is gone and no one can find him. No word, not even a phone call in five days. Was he deported? Will he call from Mexico? ICE will not say. The rent is due at the end of the month, and there is no money. And who will buy food for the children?

You can protest against the inhumanity of a system that swept up workers and took them away without a word to their families, and ICE could surely have done better. They could answer their telephone information line. They could tell families where their loved ones have been taken. They could arrange to keep the detainees closer to home, at least over the holidays, instead of shipping them hundreds of miles away to jails in Atlanta or elsewhere.

Ultimately, though, ICE ‘s harsh task is to get rid of the prisoners. The law says they have to go. Send them back to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. The immigration laws give them no legal way to enter this country and no legal way to stay.

Rafael is diabetic and needs seven shots of insulin a day. This costs $300 a week. The entire family helped work to pay for Rafael’s insulin, and now that one of the brothers was taken they are not sure how they will be able to continue to pay for this.

The law says Rafael’s brothers and sisters must leave, and never return. The law makes no exceptions for hard-working people, for people who just want to feed their families, for people who want a better life for themselves and their children. The law does not give them any legal way to enter the United States. The law says that we do not want them here, in our towns and our factories.

Barbara got home the night of the raids to hear several voicemail messages from families she knows well, who work at Swift. She went house to house, finding them too terrified to even open the door to her. All lights were turned out, and parents tried to keep their children silent. Barbara took some of the families to her home. By the end of the night, she had 25-30 people in her home. She described the scene:  “People are afraid to go outside, afraid to open their doors, afraid to go to the market. Afraid of everything. The terror and empty-stare in people’s eyes is indescribable. Is this the way we treat people in America? Is this what Christian-professing people do to each other, and just before Christmas?”

We can protest outside the Senator’s office, and write letters to the editors, and call our Congressional representatives. We can send money and food and diapers to the families left behind. But we know that, in the end, all our efforts are not enough to help Maria and Esperanza and Luis and Gerardo and their children. The law says they have to go.

Anger at the cold, impersonal injustice of our laws drives us to work for change. We hope, we believe that some day we will change that law. But not today.

Despite all we can do, the law takes its course. No matter what we do, we are still left with holes in our community and in our hearts, and with a loss, an emptiness that fills up with tears.

When they came for the meatpackers, what did we do? When the armed agents descended on the brown-skinned residents of our town, our state, our nation, did we speak up? What did we do when the children came home to empty houses and cried for their parents?

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. ” Pastor Martin Niemoller

Last week they came for the immigrants, taking them from meatpacking plants to distant jails, wrenching apart families and communities, safeguarding national security by deporting people whose greatest crime was to work and pay taxes.

Last month they came for the imams, removing them from the plane, refusing to allow them to explain that they were only attending a conference, that they had already informed local police—in advance—that they would be visiting Minneapolis and that they were not dangerous.

Before that, they dropped bombs on Iraq. They tortured prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They arrested a U.S. citizen employee of a contractor in Iraq—a U.S. citizen who had blown the whistle on corruption and illegal activities—and held him in Iraq, incommunicado for weeks, confined to a small cell with bright lights and blaring music and frequent interrogation—for three months. They say that international rules against torture do not apply, and that only some of the Geneva Conventions on warfare apply.

Who are “they”? We buy the uniforms they wear. Our tax dollars pay their salaries. They serve in our military, police force, immigration service. They direct our State Department and in the Pentagon and in the Department of Homeland Security. They follow orders from our President and our Congress. They act in our name.

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.”

On December 12, they came for the immigrants. They came for the brown-skinned workers, for the workers with “Hispanic surnames,” for the immigrants suspected of the crime of working in America to feed their children. Hundreds of armed officers from the Department of Homeland Security descended on Swift meatpacking plants in Worthington, Minnesota – and in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Utah and Iowa. They closed down operations, shut out union representatives and lawyers and confined workers for interrogation. Not all the workers, of course. Only those suspected of the crime of Working While Brown.

The brown-skinned workers were held until they could prove their right to work in the United States. Mexican-Americans have to prove their right to live here, over and over again. When is the last time that a German-American or Norwegian-American or Irish-American worker had to prove that right?

More than 220 Minnesotans were arrested, more than 1200 workers across the country. In five out of the six plants, the workers were members of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Immigration (ICE) authorities said the operation was a crackdown on identity theft.

“Identity theft” conjures up visions of criminals running up credit card bills and ruining the victims’ credit rating. Not these “identity thieves”—they used the Social Security numbers to get jobs. Hard, dangerous, dirty jobs in the meatpacking industry. They worked and they paid taxes on their earnings. The money that they, and other undocumented workers, pay into the Social Security system alone adds up to a whopping seven billion dollars each year. And that’s a pure contribution, because they will never be able to collect a dime in Social Security benefits.

“Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” 

On December 12, the ICE police came for the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. The ICE police held them incommunicado, refused to let lawyers talk to them, refused to tell family members whether their sister/brother/mother/father/aunt/uncle was in custody, where they were held, where they would be taken.

“They’re coming to our homes, they’re taking us from our homes.” An anguished Guatemalan father called his German-American friend. And she went, in her pick-up truck with a topper on the back, to rescue her friends from the ICE that chilled this December day.

The immigrants who cut up carcasses for Christmas hams cannot go home for Christmas. They will spend Christmas separated from their loved ones, shipped to out-of-state jails or deported. The families left behind will cry and their friends will call ICE’s designated number over and over to find out where their loved ones are—and will continue to get no answer.

When our neighbors locked their doors and pulled down the shades on their windows and hid in fear from the knock on the door, what did we do? When our government targeted Latinos or Muslims or Arabs, what did we say?

This is the time to stand up. This is the time to speak.