VINNIE'S BOO-BOO
"WTF?!" That's what this ticked-off Toucan thought when he saw that local Immigration and Customs Enforcement flack Vinnie Picard was quoted in the paper of record as saying, "Arizona's 287(g) program is working as intended," and that there are no "firsthand" complaints of racial-profiling lodged with the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part.
Related Content
More About
Had Vinnie been smokin' the good ganja? Does the guy read the papers? Or does he just use them to roll himself a fat doobie?
Even if Picard never got around to perusing the ACLU's big lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio alleging all kinds of civil rights abuses, complaints regarding Arpaio's 287(g)-men — you know, the 160 MCSO deputies "cross-trained" by the feds as ICE agents — are as plentiful as frickin' poppies in Afghanistan these days.
The Bird figures you'd have to be doing your best King Oedipus impersonation to not see evidence that Arpaio's abusing his 287(g) powers. Maybe Vinnie never got his invite to Joe's 200 Mexican March earlier this month, where Arpaio segregated a passel of undocumented immigrants in their own separate Tent City, with its own electrified fence, marching them past a gantlet of shutterbugs from the Fourth Estate.
Though all of those poor saps were wearing striped shirts reading "UNSENTENCED" — meaning they were awaiting trial — they probably all had ICE holds on them, as Arpaio had identified them as illegal immigrants.
Why, that stunt has pissed off folks far and wide, from legislators in Mexico to the New York Times, which denounced the barbaric photo op and called on DHS to rein in Maricopa County's Bull Connor.
Arpaio's sick media event even awoke a sleeping giant, the U.S. Congress, in the form of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan and three other ranking Dems on the committee, who wrote a stern letter to Barack Obama's new attorney general, Eric Holder, and DHS chief, Janet Napolitano, telling them to get busy and investigate Arpaio's wrinkled ass.
But Picard must've missed all that, 'cause here he was spouting the party line, saying all was hunky-dory in Denmark — despite that rotten flounder smell. This feathered fiend decided to give the flack a call to give him a hard time about his bout with foot-in-mouth disease. But Picard's lips had been permanently sealed by his superiors on the issue of the 287(g) program, and he was referring all calls to one of his betters in D.C.
Picard did make clear, however, that this was a new policy, one that came after his statements to the local daily. So this peeved parakeet phoned ICE headquarters in D.C. The call was not returned.
ICE is sure sensitive all of a sudden. Aren't these the badasses who go around breaking up families, throwing dishwashers and day laborers in jail, treating moms and dads like they're thieves and killers? Big, tough hombres, eh? So tough, that at least under Arpaio's command, his 287(g) thugs wear black ski masks while they're pulling over little old ladies and gardeners for traffic violations.
Really, this heron's heart goes out to Picard and all the government flacks forced to rationalize the vile stuff ICE does on a regular basis in the name of immigration enforcement. The ones who should go down — whose careers should rightfully be ruined and who should be butt-kicked out of government service — are a-holes like Arizona ICE pooh-bah Matthew Allen, whose lips have been KrazyGlued to Joe Arpaio's keister since he scored the job early last year. And, of course, Allen's bosses in D.C.
In other words, Picard is just a PR flunky, albeit a polite one for the local press to deal with. The real evil in ICE is further up the food chain.
ICE ON FIRE
Thing is, even without Arpaio as its albatross, ICE is besieged nationwide with bad news, tales of misdeeds, and study after study arguing that the 287(g) program should be tossed like a used Tiparillo.
Examples of ICE eff-ups are popping up daily, in newspapers from sea to shining sea. Recently, the Baltimore Sun reported that the immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland obtained through the Freedom of Information Act a copy of an internal ICE document detailing an investigation into an ICE raid on a Baltimore 7-Eleven in 2007.
The ICE report contradicted statements from some ICE officers that they'd just happened to be grabbing a cup o' Joe at the 7-Eleven when they lucked upon a group of day laborers.
"The evidence revealed that the Fugitive Operations officers were ordered to seek additional arrests that day due to managerial pressure to produce statistics for Operation Return to Sender," said the ICE doc.
See, Operation Return to Sender is the name of a massive ICE dragnet that's stated intention is to collar criminal aliens, gangbangers, and such. Not the schmucks waiting for handyman work at the corner convenience store. The fact that ICE agents were pressured to essentially go out and grab every Mexican they could lay their hands on runs counter to ICE's propaganda on the subject.