Dem come for de rasta and you say nothingIt's easy to ignore things. I do it all the time. Hell, I'm ignoring someone right now. The problem, even disregarding the moral standpoint, is when we ignore things that pose a distant threat to ourselves. We don't ignore a wound, or it will fester. We don't ignore mold, or we will become sick. We don't ignore imperialism (well...), or eventually it will reach us.
Dem come for the Muslims you say nothing
Dem come for the anti-globalist you say nothing
Dem even come for the liberals and you say nothing
Dem come for you and who will speak for you? Who will speak for you, who?
---"Round Up" by Asian Dub Foundation
So why do we ignore the way freedoms are disappearing, invisibly in the night, raptured by nativism?
A common refrain: "If you're here legally, you have nothing to worry about. The only people who need to be scared are the illegals."
Bull. Sorry to break it to you, but you should be worried. And I'm here to show you why.
A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official acknowledged Wednesday that his agency has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but he denied that his agency has widespread problems with deporting the wrong people.
That sounds scary but perhaps dismissible until you get into the details. You can read the entire article here.
Last month, Thomas Warziniack, a U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, was mistakenly detained for weeks in an Arizona immigration facility and told that he was going to be deported to Russia.
You can find out more about Thomas here. Despite repeated protestations, he was detained for weeks, and barely escaped being deported to a country he wasn't from. Not Mexico; Russia. Yeah, this is even happening to white people now. You can't get away from it.
In another high-profile example, ICE agents in California mistakenly deported Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen, to Mexico. Guzman was found months later when he tried to return to the United States.
Marie Justeen Mancha, a 17-year-old born in Texas, said ICE agents raided her family's home in Georgia in 2006 while her mother was running an errand. Her mother is also a U.S. citizen.
"I started to hear the words, 'Police! Illegals!'" she recalled. "I walked around the corner from the hallway and saw a tall man reach toward his gun and look straight at me."
For more on how ICE has gone beyond the call of duty in searching for undocumented folks, see this article from Southern Poverty Law Center.
The raids began on Sept. 1, 2006, and lasted for several weeks. They were intended to locate unauthorized immigrants who worked at a poultry plant in Stillmore, a town of about 1,000 people in Emanuel County. But rather than conduct a raid only at the plant, dozens of agents fanned out across residential areas in three counties — stopping motorists, breaking into homes and threatening people with tear gas and guns. Hundreds were terrorized. Many fled into the woods.
You're getting chills, right?
Although Mead said that Guzman is the only U.S. citizen he knows who's been deported erroneously, immigration lawyers have said they've found at least seven others.
[...]
In 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, identified 125 people in immigration detention centers who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.
No matter where you stand on this issue, there is a conclusion here that any reasonable person can come to: once you have started sell people to the forces of oppression, once you have denied them the same rights afforded to you, the ground itself becomes less sturdy. You cannot take one step into the abyss and then return. You cannot travel through time without starting a chain reaction that eventually overcomes you. You cannot tell a lie without creating another, and another, and another, until no truth remains.
Eight American citizens have been deported. Some people might dismiss that. It's such a SMALL number. But how can even such a small number exist, unless there is something seriously wrong with the process that leads to deportation? It is simple. If someone claims to be an American citizen, you allow them to confirm it. You do not deport someone who is mentally disabled without contacting a family member. How could such enormously obvious steps be looked over?
They were looked over because people who are detained and deported have few rights in this country. When immigration agents are allowed to enter immigrants' homes without warrants, then occasionally you will have a young citizen girl like Marie victimized, while tens of thousands more children and teenagers who have been harrassed and terrified in their own homes whisper their stories silently in the shadows behind her. When in most cases immigrants are not allowed legal representation before a court of law, you will have people like Guzman deported, his face animated by the unseen expressions of horror, resignation, loneliness, and defeat of millions more.
This is why you are obligated to stand up for immigrant rights. When they come into your home with guns, as they did with Marie, looking like an army, you are no longer an American citizen with constitutionally guaranteed rights. You are someone who is scared, who wants to live, who doesn't want to cause trouble, who thought it could never happen to you. You are someone who thinks you can sort this out. All you have to do is...wait, where's your birth certificate? Wait! Wait!
You are not immune to the meme of fear in the immigrant community. It's contagious.
