A couple weeks ago on May 18, Border Patrol agents in Los Angeles swept a neighborhood in Boyle Heights, raiding houses and an apartment complex and arresting seven Mexican-American and Guatemalan-American immigrants.

It appears the reason behind the raid was a deliberate effort to target Claudia Rueda Vidal, a 22 year old DACA-eligible student at Cal State LA. Claudia has been an immigrant rights activist since she was 17, previously got her mother Teresa Vidal-Jaime released from immigration lockup, and has publicly denounced the abusive practices of the Border Patrol. Throughout the raids, Border Patrol agents repeatedly interrogated community members asking for Claudia Rueda by name until they found her outside on the street and surrounded her. She is currently detained at Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Shared Article from Take Action: Urge ICE to Grant Prosecutorial Discretion to Claudia

Take Action: Urge ICE to Grant Prosecutorial Discretion to Claud…

Claudia is an immigration activist, DACA eligible youth and student at Cal State LA

action.ndlon.org

Support Local Los Angeles Action: Press Conference to Denounce Border Patrol Raids and Abuses

• When: Thursday, June 1st, 2017
• Where: End of S Bernal Ave (Intersections: S Bernal Ave & E Sabina Street, 90023)
• Time: 10am
• Organizations present will include: Union de Vecinos, Los Angeles Immigrant Youth Coalition, Ovarian Psyco-Cycles, Serve the People, Defend Boyle Heights, NDLON, Cal State Students

#BorderPatroloutLosAngeles

Facebook Event

So border-psychotic Jan Brewer, proponent of ethnic cleansing and arbitrary Governor over the state of Arizona, is unhappy with the U.S. federal government. The Feds recently got part of her racist Papers-Please police-state bill struck down in court; so she has decided to sue them back:

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona said Thursday that she will raise private funds to countersue the federal government for failing to enforce immigration laws…. At a news conference, Ms. Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne said the Obama administration had failed to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the border in huge numbers and stuck the state with the cost of dealing with its failed policies…. In their legal challenge, the state intends to argue that it is being "invaded" by illegal immigrants from Mexico.

— Arizona: State Countersues Over Immigration Law, New York Times Briefs (11 February 2011)

This is of course a desperate stab at protecting a vicious and idiotic policy — in which a tiny minority of power-mongering Arizonans are trying to use a suit in federal court to get the U.S.’s paramilitary Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement squads to pour into their state, in order to assault, imprison, and exile the large number of perfectly peaceful travelers and longtime residents of Arizona, who happen to be there without papers from the federal government; but in a typical statist inversion, it is the peaceful travelers and the longtime residents, not the militarized, due-process-free federal occupation forces that are described as invaders. Ho, ho.

However, while I can’t say I have any sympathy for Jan Brewer or her fellow power-mongers, I can say that I’m actually glad to hear about this lawsuit. Why? Because, as A Spokesman For The Department of Homeland Security puts it:

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, Matt Chander said in a statement in response, A meritless claim such as this does nothing to secure the border.

— Arizona: State Countersues Over Immigration Law, New York Times Briefs (11 February 2011)

Precisely; that’s why, despicable as I think Brewer’s cause is, I’m happy to see the claim being pressed. Every day and every dollar that the state government spends fighting a futile court battle with the federal government is another day and another dollar that won’t go towards securing government control over borders, or to designing and passing more idiotic power-trip police-state laws like SB 1070. The more bickering they do and the less security they’re able to inflict, the better it’ll be for all peaceful people making an honest living.

I hope this stupid lawsuit lasts forever.

Schumer Bill Sends Reinforcements, Drones to Border. www.nydailynews.com (2010-08-28):

The Senate passed a $600 million bill tonight to beef up border security by adding 1,500 new enforcement agents and sending airborne drones to search for illegal immigrants. The bill, backed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), targets the Mexican border…

In which “Progressive” Democrats pursue a sensible to comprehensive immigration reform by massively increasing the violent enforcement of border policies that they themselves criticize as arbitrary and irrational and desperately in need of a radical overhaul. The United States Senate’s notion of “making the border more secure than ever” is of course to further militarize the 200 mile free-fire zone, among other things creating a paramilitary “strike force” of 1,000 new border guards to interdict, harass or shoot immigrants trying to cross an imaginary line in the sand, and expropriating $32,000,000 to pay for unmanned drone warplanes to help them spy on the borderlands. Schumer, progressive humanitarian that he is, wants us to know that at least the drones won’t be armed with air-to-surface missiles. Yet. So just who is this policy of increased spying and border militarization making more “secure”? Not people living on or near the border, that’s for sure.

Border laws kill.

In a recent post, Stentor does a good job of explaining one of the (many) reasons why.

Second [of a couple immigration-related stories] is Border Patrol’s declaration and half-hearted not-quite-retraction of a policy of checking immigration status during natural disaster evacuations. The result is to make many Latin@s — including those with legal status up to natural-born citizen — reluctant to evacuate, either because they fear consequences for themselves (if I flee my house without my passport, I still have my skin and my accent, but others don’t have those advantages), or because of the consequences for their family and community members. So not only are people being unnecessarily exposed to natural disasters, they’re also being set up so they can be blamed for choosing to stay behind a la the poor black non-evacuees during Katrina. This links in to the sanctuary cities and Sheriff Joe issue in terms of making every occasion an occasion for checking people’s status, regardless of whether such singleminded focus on immigration enforcement undermines the government’s other duties. It also reveals an important aspect of disaster management — disasters intensify people’s interactions with the State. Complying with disaster management plans puts you in direct contact with police, the national guard, and other direct agents of state coercion, whereas failure to comply puts you wholly outside their protection (or even in direct opposition to them, as a possible looter). This would be fine, even beneficial, if you are on good terms with the state — if you trust it to be acting in your best interests. For people who have a longstanding antagonistic relationships with the state, however — such as people of color and immigrants — natural disasters are a prime occasion for the state to increase its pernicious interference. And all of this applies not just to the immediate disaster management (evacuation, etc.) but also to the longer-term recovery process.

— Stentor, debitage (2008-06-10): Deporting Valedictorians And Hurricane Evacuees

Read the whole thing.

(Via comments on feministe 2008-06-15.)

Steven Rhett gets pinched by the border cops at San Ysidro while he’s trying to peaceably move some marijuana across an imaginary line for some willing customers in the United States. Dale Franks, a California limited-governmentalist blogger who opposes drug prohibition, gets to sit in as Juror #1. If Dale Franks doesn’t vote to convict, the jury will hang and Steven Rhett will be able to go on living his life. After a short chat about the facts of the case, Dale Franks does his civic duty by voting to convict Steven Rhett on all charges, because that’s what The Law says. Back at QandO, Dale Franks blogs about his interesting experience. Meanwhile, Steven Rhett will be having an interesting experience in federal prison for the next ten years of his life.

Down in the comments, several anarchists ask Franks how he justifies directly collaborating in ruining a harmless man and robbing him of ten years of his life, when Franks himself doesn’t believe that anything Rhett did should be treated as a crime. Franks answers their objections decisively by getting into an argument with another limited governmentalist over whether or not the Constitution says it’s O.K., and what the word regulate meant in the 1780s.

If this is how the trains run around here, I’ll pass. I’m not interested in Dale Franks’s kind of railroading.