Last Wednesday was a day of shame for our nation, a day when God's will was clearly violated. But for the Bush administration it was a day like any other. Business as usual meant answering a failed immigration policy with the arrest of 1,187 undocumented migrant workers.
On Wednesday morning, Bush's Department of Homeland Security systematically ripped apart nearly 1,200 families in 26 states.
Raids targeted IFCO Systems pallet plants across the country. Armed agents chased undocumented men and women as they ran in fear of being caught and forced to leave behind children, parents or spouses. This was just one more occasion for our president to sacrifice human rights for a political photo-op.
Not surprisingly, the arrests were timed with a public announcement that DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to launch a new strategy pursuing employers who disregard immigration law.
Yet Wednesday's arrests failed to target even one high-level executive of the multi-million-dollar corporations responsible for hiring the undocumented workers. Bush's millionaire friends got to go home and have dinner with their wives and tuck their babies into bed.
This was not the case for Cesar Ruben Rodriguez. The 20-year-old father, an undocumented migrant from Mexico who has lived in the United States since he was at least 6, was arrested Wednesday at Phoenix's IFCO plant. It will be many nights, if ever, before he gets to put his 1-year-old daughter to bed. But the suffering of 1,187 families didn't keep DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff from beaming with pride over his sick accomplishments.
"Yesterday and today, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, working with the U.S. Attorney's office and other authorities, executed the largest single worksite enforcement operation against a company in American history," Chertoff said. "In fact, we arrested more people in this single worksite enforcement operation than in the entirety of last year."
I'll pray for your sold soul, Chertoff. Is this my dear country's solution for fixing immigration? Tearing parents from their children? I may have lost all faith in my national leadership, but I still believe in the good will of Americans. We ought to demand reform that does not punish those who follow God's direction above any man-made law.
There's no denying there are few responsibilities holier than that of a parent's to provide for their child. As I search the sweet hazel eyes of my son, I know this to be true. Without the blessing of being born in a country where I can fulfill my family's dreams, I too would follow God's path across a border to a land where my baby would have a chance.
On the evening of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy said, "What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice for those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."
Or whether they be undocumented and working in the U.S.
Dianna Nanez is a journalism graduate student. Reach her at dianna.nanez@asu.edu.
