Border Patrol in Training?

This makes me want to cry:

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

Continuing struggles..

There's new technology for policing the border apparently - people can be minutemen now from the comfort of their living rooms. For the full article on NPR click here

Texas sheriffs have erected a series of surveillance cameras along the Rio Grande and connected them to the Internet.

Thousands of people are now virtual Border Patrol agents — and they're on the lookout for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

On Blueservo's Web site, each camera focuses on an area that's known for illegal crossing. Next to a real-time view of a grassy meadow is the message: "Look for individuals on foot carrying backpacks." A shot of a border highway says, "If you see movement from the right to the left, please report this activity."

When a citizen spots suspicious activity, they click a button on the Web site and write a report. That message goes to the corresponding sheriff's office. The sheriff may handle the problem or call the U.S. Border Patrol.

To date, more than 43,000 people have logged on and become, as the Web site calls them, "virtual Texas deputies."

But resistance to the military/prison industrial complex lives on.

PhillyIMC reports that:

On Monday, February 16th, a diverse group of 30 anti-war and peace activists occupied the Army Experience Center at the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia for about ten minutes. Activists had taped signs to their chests that read WAR IS NOT A GAME. Upon the arrival of two officers from the Philadelphia police civil affairs unit, the activists who had been holding freeze positions left the Center. A press release was read to the retired Army civilian director of the Center and two Army officer connected with it. For the full story read here

Undocumented Immigration 101

So here's the basic situation as I understand it
The U.S. government has historically:
- manipulated governments and trade in the region,
- exploited opportunities to use land and bodies from south of the border
- criminalized the bodies that cross the border because of the incentives that big business (supported by the same government) provides for crossing
- accepted taxes from these individuals (for more click here) and
- allowed the U.S. economy to benefit from these workers while simultaneously
- incarcerating, detaining, and deporting any undocumented workers they find

The NYT reported today that undocumented immigrants are actually rebuilding New Orleans for us.. and then being mugged and attacked in the streets. For the full article click here

As Tom Barry writes in Dollars and Sense,

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 drastically altered the traditional political economy of immigration. The millions of undocumented immigrants—those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas—who were living and working in the United States were no longer simply regarded as a shadow population or as surplus cheap labor. In the public and policy debate, immigrants were increasingly defined as threats to the nation’s security. Categorizing immigrants as national security threats gave the government’s flailing immigration law-enforcement and border- control operations a new unifying logic that has propelled the immigrant crackdown forward.

Responsibility for immigration law-enforcement and border control passed from the Justice Department to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In Congress Democrats and Republicans alike readily supported a vast expansion of the country’s immigration control apparatus—doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and authorizing a tripling of immigrant prison beds.

Today, after the shift in the immigration debate, the $15 billion-plus DHS budget for immigration affairs has fueled an immigrant-crackdown economy that has greatly boosted the already-bloated prison industry. Even now, with the economy imploding, immigrants are currently behind one of the country’s most profitable industries: they are the nation’s fastest growing sector of the U.S. prison population.

Across the country new prisons are hurriedly being constructed to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants caught each year. State and local governments are vying with each other to attract new immigrant prisons as the foundation of their rural “economic development” plans.

While DHS is driving immigrants from their jobs and homes, U.S. firms in the business of providing prison beds are raking in record profits from the immigrant crackdown. Although only one piece of the broader story of immigration, it’s all a part of the new political economy of immigration."

Click here for the full article The New Political Economy of Immigration