Fearing the knock on the door

I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank in high school ... how Anne and her family hid in the attic of a Dutch home her father's business in Amsterdam (there you go, Soprano) to avoid detection (and detention) by the Nazis.

I don't mean to draw too much of a parallel between deportation and extermination, but I imagine there's more than a few people worried every day whether it will be the day the INS comes knocking on their door.

Far from the dusty Mexican border and Florida's coastal waters, federal authorities have stepped up the battle to control immigration, and, in many cases, the new front is just down the block.

A fast-growing network of fugitive squads is tracking and arresting undocumented immigrants inside the United States, in living rooms and on front doorsteps.

Though the squads' principal targets are terrorism suspects and convicted criminals, more than half of the people they snare are immigrants who lost legal bids for asylum or other relief, and then remained here illegally. Many have paid taxes, sent their U.S.-born children to public schools -- and quietly ignored a judge's order to leave the United States.

They're called "absconders," and increasingly they are the targets of federal fugitive squads.

Yes, I understand that there are immigration laws, so please don't give me that bullshit about how the law has to be enforced. What troubles me is the growing intensity of these squads, made worse by the draconian anti-terrorism hysteria of the Bush maladministration:

"People need to be identified. Post 9-11 taught us this," said Mike Rozos, field director of Detentions and Removals in Florida, and one of the creators of the Fugitive Operations Program. Rozos said his forces go after criminals and noncriminals alike.

"We have 12 million illegal aliens in the country," he said. "Who are they? Are they your domestic, doing the house cleaning chores, or are they here to do something else?"

Yes, it's factually true that they are going after both criminals and non-criminals, but check out the trends:


Certainly no one reasonably would argue that criminals illegally in this country ought not be deported. But if people who have been contributing in a positive way to society have their lives destroyed on a whim merely because they have failed to legalize their immigration status, or if they have to be separated from their American-born children abruptly, there is something seriously wrong with the system.

Instead of expending valuable resources on going all "Dog the Bounty Hunter" on non-criminal illegal aliens, doesn't it make more sense to direct those resources first toward apprehending those whose presence in the U.S. is harmful, i.e., criminals? Moreover, there are administrative and judicial processes for immigration violations that are being circumvented or ignored by these vigilante gangs. The procedures exist for a reason; if deportation or some other sanction is necessary, the government should go through the proper channels, not hunt these people down with these federally-supported gangs of enforcers.