Criminalizing Immigrants as felons was considered a trademark of the Bush Administration, an inhumane excess that a more charismatic President Obama supposedly wouldn’t possibly endorse.
La criminalización de inmigrantes fue un sello del gobierno de George W. Bush y un exceso inhumano que supuestamente un presidente más carismático no acogería.
One of the most shameful cases took place in Iowa when 400 immigrant workers were rounded up as criminals and then prosecuted en-mass in makeshift courtrooms inside shipping containers.
Basic human rights were blatantly ignored and guilty pleas were imposed on hundreds of immigrant workers expeditiously sentenced through rushed proceedings that constituted a mockery and travesty of justice. Erick Camayd-Freixas a volunteer translator who attempted to assist dozens of Guatemalan workers denounced how those guilty pleas were forced, resulting in many of them being imprisoned for a five-month term and later deported back to Guatemala.
The lead prosecutor of the Agriprocessors Meat Packing Plant case in Postville Iowa was Stephanie Rose, suddenly turned into a local hero and now President’s Obama choice for U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Iowa.
“Does she stand by those tactics?” asked David Leopold, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the national immigration bar. “Would she engage again in this type of prosecution of scores of undocumented workers guilty of nothing more than civil immigration violations?”
The Supreme Court in May 2009 ruled unanimously that a federal identity-theft law might not be used against immigrant workers who used false Social Security numbers to get jobs. Sad to say Obama’s choice for Attorney General in Iowa was completely at odds with the thinking of the U.S. Supreme Court. The reason being Ms. Rose actually spear headed the abusive proceedings just the year before.
“The court’s ruling preserves basic ideals of fairness for some of our society’s most vulnerable workers,” said Chuck Roth, litigation director at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago. “An immigrant who uses a false Social Security number to get a job doesn’t intend to harm anyone, and it makes no sense to spend our tax dollars to imprison them for two years.”
Mr. President, your candidate for the U.S. Attorney in the northern district of Iowa fails in two basic counts, Ms. Roses legal approach towards immigrant workers treating them as felons is not consistent with the higher opinion of our Supreme Court, and more importantly is definitely at odds with the respect that must be bestowed on immigrant workers basic human rights.
