International apartheid in Roswell
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 17 years ago, in 2007, on the World Wide Web.
According to the ruling elite and the rank-and-file of bellowing Know-Nothing busybodies, all the people of the world must be segregated according to their nationality. If they won’t stay in their
place voluntarily, then the government had better make them stay there through paramilitary lockdowns at national borders and rigid enforcement of a state-imposed passbook (visa,
passport
) system to control where people can live and work, which is to say a system of government permission slips for existing, which provides a mechanism for the state to track and control those who go through official channels, and a mechanism for detecting, arresting, jailing, and exiling peaceful residents from the communities that they now call home when they cannot meet some presumptuous government official’s demand for Ihre Papiere, bitte.
Those who stand up for this despicable system of coercion and control — some of whom embrace it whole-heartedly out of unapologetic race hatred or inquisitorial theo-nationalism, and some of whom do the same damage by making half-hearted Sensible Liberal excuses based on an illusory need for control or the chauvinistic ideal of assimilation
— are all promoting a government-imposed system of discrimination and rigid segregation in housing, employment, education, and civic life, supported by government surveillance, enforced through government violence, all in the name of an illusory national unity
or integrity
that depends, at the bottom, on having the government presumptively treat outsiders
(even those outsiders
who have been living and working inside
for years) as more dangerous, more likely to be criminal, more unsanitary, less deserving of security in their persons and effects, less worthy of a happy life, and less deserving of simply being left in peace than the native-born, solely on the basis of their nationality. That is to say, treating them as if their lives and homes and livelihoods were worth less than nothing–just so much foul-smelling garbage to be removed at the first opportunity.
It’s precisely this sort of immorality — the elevation of state control or belligerent nationalism over common decency towards peaceful people — that has been put on display recently in Roswell, New Mexico, with the arrest, jailing, expulsion and exile of Karina Acosta, a pregnant high schooler who was ready to graduate in the spring, because the immigration law, which is nothing but Jim Crow imposed at the level of nationality, forbids her from attending an Estadounidense school, and Student Resource Officer
Charlie Corn, the pig-in-residence at Roswell High School, decided to take the opportunity of a minor traffic violation pull her out of class, arrest her, and then snitch on her to La Migra, so that they could jail her and force her out of her home, away from her family, and back into her place.
U.S. immigration officials deported a pregnant Roswell High School senior after she was pulled from class Wednesday by a local police officer regarding a traffic ticket issued days before.
According to Roswell Police Chief John Balderston, Karina Acosta, 18, was given several days to provide proper identification after being cited for a parking violation and driving without a license on Nov. 29 but failed to do so.
RHS Student Resource Officer Charlie Corn, a 10-year RPD veteran, removed Acosta from class Dec. 5 regarding the traffic violation and detained her at the school before notifying U.S. immigration officials of her illegal status, according to Balderston.
Acosta, who is five months pregnant, was transported to the Chaves County Detention Center, put on hold by the INS and later deported to Mexico, according to Balderston.
In the course of an investigation, if we determine that someone is not here legally, we will contact INS and tell them what their status is,he said.Worried about the deportation of the girl and the future security of other illegal immigrant students at RHS, Acosta’s mother and nearly 50 members of the Hispanic community gathered at the RHS Little Theater, and later the Roswell Police Department, to voice their concerns.
The kids are scared now because this thing happened, so we need your help,said Maria Rodriguez to Balderston during a meeting in an RPD conference room Friday afternoon.At the meeting, Balderston listened to complaints about Corn, including allegations he targets Hispanics. Balderston agreed to meet further with representatives from the Hispanic community and Corn in an effort to ease relations and eliminate any problems or misconceptions that might exist.
If you don’t trust us then we need to do some more work here,said Balderston, who will retire Jan. 4.Roswell Independent School District Assistant Superintendent Mike Kakuska said the RISD has officially protested Acosta’s arrest with the INS and the Mexican Consulate.
We are very, very concerned as a public school as to what happened the other day,said Kakuska, addressing a group of about 50 parents who gathered at RHS Friday morning.The police officer, without our knowledge, had this young lady brought into his office here at school and the detain orders were issued through him, not the Roswell schools.— Richard Jacques, Roswell Daily Record (2007-12-08): RHS senior deported; parents concerned
The good news is that Charlie Corn and all the other pigs-in-residence have been removed from Roswell city schools. The bad news is that Karina Acosta is still stuck in Mexico, away from her family, her home, and her school. And the Roswell cops will do it again, by God, just as soon as they get the chance:
In the lengthy open meeting that lasted more than one hour, Kakuska and other school officials, including RHS Principal Brian Shea, answered questions and notified those in attendance that Corn has been removed as an SRO.
The Roswell Independent School system did not support the decision of this officer to have this young lady arrested,said Kakuska.In a joint decision by the RPD and RISD, all SROs have been removed from RISD schools. Both Balderston and Kakuska maintain that despite the incident, no contention exists between the RISD and the RPD.
We’re going to work through this and I wish I can say that it’s not going to happen again, but I can’t. The officers are going to enforce the law,said Balderston.School officials said Acosta was on course to graduate in the spring.
— Richard Jacques, Roswell Daily Record (2007-12-08): RHS senior deported; parents concerned
Just remember: it doesn’t matter to these people how good a student you are, or how hard you’ve worked, or what a decent and productive member of your community you are, let alone — ha, ha — the mere fact that you are an individual, irreplaceable human being who has the right to expect a certain level of dignity, decent treatment, and basic humanity from your neighbors and from your brothers and sisters in other communities. What matters is The Law, and the coerced integrity
of a segregated nation, and the power of the world’s governments to each keep their own herd properly corralled and branded. To hell with that idiot notion. Smash international apartheid, now and forever.
(Story thanks to brownfemipower 2007-12-11.)
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Janice
It truly amazes me that people use selective memory and totally disregard facts related to 1) This girl illegally broke into the United States. Much like a burglar or someone breaking into your home and not being welcomed in without permission 2) traffic violation (this means broke the law) 3) driving without license (Again, broke the law. I could care less that she is pregnant or not, green or not, or young old. Fact is, please see this, she broke immigration laws of this country, traffic violation laws and no insurance that could have impacted legal and U.S. citizens here that followed laws to rightfully be here. I am disgusted with people’s focus on what I call the cry me a river “poor illegal immigrant victim aspect” when they created the situation they are in. Do me a favor and remember that we have laws on the book for a reason and not that someone was practicing their penmanship or writing skills. No sympathy for anyone that breaks the law no matter if they are Russian, African, European, Australian, or whatever. If person breaks into our home the United States of America without immigrating legally, deportation is the recourse. Follow the law, all else does not matter. It is all about the law. Not that Karina is a female, young, pregnant, will graduate in Spring. Her first act was breaking the law coming into this country, breaking laws here, and I will bet LAW ABIDING citizens were paying for her prenatal care and would her subsequent delivery. I despise uninvited guests that costs law-abiding taxpaying legal and U.S. citizens that have followed all laws of the land.
No sympathy for anyone that breaks the law
Ann Frank.
It might not be fair to make an earnest reply to comments, given how clearly they use over-the-top satire by a pseudonymous open-borders advocate, intended to caricature nativists as half-literate, thoughtlessly authoritarian buffoons. But still, there’s an important to be made.
Excuse me, but Karina Acosta didn’t break into your home. She was living peacefully with her own family, without breaking into anybody’s home.
The whole United States of America is not your personal property, nor is the whole country the collective property of the U.S. government. You have every right to lock up your own home and evict anyone who’s not welcome, but if a private property owner invites an immigrant to stay on her own property, as a guest or a tenant, then neither you nor the federal government has any business locking that immigrant out of other people’s homes or evicting them from land that’s neither yours nor the government’s.
A trivial civil infraction, for which exile from her home and her school and her family is certainly not a proportionate response.
A which was only committed because the tyrannical immigration laws prevent her from getting the papers she needs to get a driver’s license. In other words, the fault of the federal government, not Karina Acosta.
This begs the question. I made an explicit argument, both in this post and elsewhere, that immigration laws are unjust laws and that nobody has any obligation to respect them–for the same reason that Southern civil rights activists had every right to defy Jim Crow racial segregation laws. If you think there is a good reason to have such laws on the books, you need to actually defend them, not just point at the books and claim that there must be a reason, somewhere.
How could you possibly know whether this is true or false? Unless you know something about Karina Acosta personally, which you haven’t mentioned, you’re just making shit up.