Arpaio has until January 4 to settle an agreement with the feds, or he will face a law suit, and a judge will decide the fate of his department.

A few hours after the report was leaked, it was announced that the Department of Homeland Security cut off Maricopa County’s access to the Secure Communities program and terminated the agreement which allowed deputies to detain people due to their immigration status. According to DHS:

“The Department of Homeland Security is troubled by the Department of Justice’s findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office …Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program.”

It is prudent that the federal government is finally taking action, but I also look at the timing, and have a hard time believing that it is much beyond an election-year ploy. The Obama administration has deported more people than even Bush.

Obama himself has done nothing to move toward an agreement in which families are no longer separated. Instead, more than half of all federal inmates will be so-called Latinos this year, and the vast majority of these new inmates are facing prison for nonviolent immigration offenses. In effect, his policies are criminalizing our community for very mild offenses. The effects of this criminalization will be felt for generations to come.

Obama is nothing if not a master of the media. Keep in mind that even though these two programs, Secure Communities and 287(g), are being withdrawn from Maricopa County, all over the county, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will continue to be subjected to the same programs that enabled Arpaio to act in this way. By withdrawing from this particular county, the Obama administration throws Latinos a bone, while he can continue to brag about the historic deportation numbers that his administration has processed.

The media picks up on his gesture and this provides him a little good faith among so-called Latino voters…or so he hopes. I don’t think that Obama will be able to drive an ample amount of Latino voters to the polls. Among issues most important to us, his performance has just been too shoddy.

Right here in Harris County, we have felt the effects of these programs. I remember marching in Washington DC over a decade ago in support of immigration reform. I could have never imagined a scenario, in which a Chicano sheriff in Harris County would be a proponent of these policies, but this is what we have in Adrian Garcia. It is true that Garcia did not decide on his own to implement these immigration policies, but he did recommend it to the County Commissioners Court.

It appears that a Houston man, Luis Alberto Delgado, was deported in 2010 due to one of these programs, or at least policies that encourage participation between local law enforcement and ICE.

The actions against Joe Arpaio are welcomed by Latinos in Maricopa County, Arizona, I am sure. This small gesture, however, does not make up for Obama’s general inaction on the issue of immigration. All of this speaks nothing of the bill that Obama intends to sign that will include “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world,” according to a legal group.

I have often wondered how or why Obama ended up the way he has. Whatever the reasons, tokens won’t pay the bill owed to Latinos.

For decades, white voters have tended to lean Republican while non-whites have been strongly Democratic, so the swiftly falling ratio of the former to the latter has become a source of major concern, even alarm, within the top ranks of the GOP, which received a sharp wake-up call when gigantic California, traditionally one of the most reliably Republican states, suddenly became one of the most reliably Democratic.

Just under three months ago, an article exposing John Tanton as the white nationalist founder of the modern day anti-immigrant movement appeared on the front page of a Sunday edition of The New York Times.

Soon after, Tanton’s name quietly disappeared from the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization he founded in 1979. Tanton’s health issues were cited as the reason he left the board, but many believed increasing scrutiny of the group’s ties to Tanton was the real cause.

Farmers are feeling the brunt of it as many have unpicked crops which are rotting on the vine. According to the report:

On Chandler Mountain in north Alabama, tomato farmer Lana Boatwright said only eight of the 48 Hispanic workers she needed for harvest showed up after the law took effect. Those who did were frightened.

“My husband and I take them to the grocery store at night and shop for them because they are afraid they will be arrested,” she said.

Farmer Chad Smith said his family farm stands to lose up to $150,000 because there are not enough workers to pick tomatoes spoiling in the fields.

“We will be lucky to be in business next year,” he said.

The financial toll will vary by area, and experts said it’s too early to make predictions.

…

Builders have complained they can’t find replacement workers and delays in projects are expected. Once the economy picks up and construction returns to normal, the impact will increase, said Russell Davis, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Alabama.

“There is going to be a void. No question,” Davis said.

A group of patriotic Americans showed up to the farm to protest, but oddly opted not to work. Click below to see footage of their protest.

I thought for a split second that he might catch or correct himself, but no he just kept on going, as if he did blacks a favor. Berry, who repeatedly mocks black speech inflections and Spanish-language accents, probably did not even realize that he had given away the image that he holds of black people. That it was appropriate to mention that he could do without drug dealers and welfare queens, while at the same time discussing the efficacy of hanging of black people really just shows how delusional these people are.

A few months before that, he proudly said that he was so happy to see budget cuts in education because he frankly did not want to pay to educate poor Mexican kids. He also said that immigration activists (or as he calls them illegal coddlers, and generally people like me) should be hit in the nose because that generates a tear response. (The comment was promptly scrubbed from the archived podcast, frustrating any complaints to the FCC regarding the incitement of violence.)

Today, he said that black people (yes all of them) are not politically mature enough to undersand that Obama can be criticized. Nevermind the harsh rebukes of Obama by Cornel West and Tavis Smiley.

Berry likes to posture himself as a brave commentator who won’t be bound by political correctness, but he is really just a small, ignorant redneck who learned to read and brush his teeth and probably a little ‘rithmetic…a little. No titles, radio programs or ratings will ever change that.

A few months ago, when he sent his “Berry Brigade” to confront us at a press conference, three grandmothers showed. So he’s impotent as well.

In the world of conservative talk radio, most allegations of racism or racial bias are dismissed as exaggerations or as a way for a special interest group to gain some sort of political power by inventing something that did not really happen. So when an incident was labeled as hateful and was actually acknowledged it piqued my interest.

Beck was referring to an incident that had happened on the ten year anniversary of September 11, right here in Houston, Texas. According to his commentary, an employee at a sandwich shop drew pictures of the World Trade Center attack on a to-go box and handed it to a Muslim patron, saying, “Happy 9-11. Allahu Akbar,” a phrase meaning God is Greatest, and also a phrase co-opted by terrorists.

This admission on the part of Glenn Beck was eye-opening for me. I had tended to believe that these conservatives continuously denied the existence of racism because it was in their own interest. Instead, it appears that they really believe that racism only comes in the form of open name-calling.

This perspective is fully lacking in the understanding of institutionalized racism, and the racism that simply is kept under the covers. It appears that from Beck’s perspective, if someone does not directly use a racial slur, it really just does not count.

In an upcoming campaign, Houston United, a local coalition of different organizations, is working to shed light on the true nature of racial profiling. The group shares this example:

“Carlos has been a businessman, a church deacon and a responsible head of household for this family. He had been in the United States for over 10 years. Three weeks ago, Carlos changed lanes without putting on his blinker. He got stopped by a police officer in the Memorial area of Houston. Carlos was arrested for not having a valid Texas Drivers License since the State of Texas prohibits this type of license for undocumented immigrants. Carlos was then turned over to ICE authorities; he awaits deportation. In the meantime, his family has suffered an immense emotional and economic blow and his church is horrified that one of its most active members is now in a federal immigration detention facility.”
Incidents like these are now common-place, with Latinos continually feeling over-policed with respect to traffic and under-protected with respect to real crimes.
There is a real perception that law-enforcement openly targets Latinos for traffic violations, since they seem to have the attitude that they could also increase the deportation numbers. Undocumented, documented and native-born Latinos are all feeling the effects of Sheriff Garcia’s decision to support Secure Communities (and yes he volunteered for 287-g before Secure Communities was apparently mandatory).
These effects do not even consider the cause for the massive amounts of immigration to the United States. Anytime a country exploits another country by only exploiting cheap labor and refuses to invest anything which could spur development in that country, it is an act of organized racism called imperialism.
As far as we know, neither those maquiladora owners nor those law enforcement officers have openly used racial epithets (at least recently). Even so, these policies have a far more profound effect on our everyday lives than a guy in a sandwich shop calling us names.
We do not need conservatives to acknowledge these other forms of racism. They never have, but when people in and from our own community, like Sherriff Garcia, refuse to acknowledge the truth about racist policies, and when certain supposed civil rights groups and the Democratic Party continue to support him, regardless of these policies, then we know that our community is in real trouble if we do not look for alternatives.

One of the biggest dramas that played out over the past week was outlandish commentary by a controversial comedian, Katt Williams. Katt Williams had been among my favorite comedians, despite, or perhaps because of, his many controversial remarks.

Overnight a barrage of internet postings denounced some racist rant that Katt Williams, who is black, had spewed against Mexicans and Chicanos. It surprised me, as it may surprise you, that I really did not pay much attention to it…at first. In fact, I didn’t bother to investigate what he had said. I wondered how bad it could be, but I also thought that there was much more important things to worry about than a few words by an entertainer.

I ignored it the first day. By the second and third day the online outrage continued, with more and more people denouncing Katt Williams as a racist. A boycott was announced. Still, I didn’t pay much attention, because I figured that it could not have much of an impact on serious issues at hand. Our schools are falling apart; our families are being broken apart by ICE; and some people are letting a joker get them upset.

Finally, another day passed, and I saw one of my favorite authors post an opinion editorial. Then I saw a young lady post a YouTube video about the situation. I decided not to ignore it any longer.

What I saw Katt Williams say did not shock me. It is not that what he said was inoffensive, but much of what I had already read had prepared me for the worst.

Challenging the historical fact that these lands were taken by the United States by force, Willams taunted, “”… it appears to me, y’all like it over here a lot… If y’all had California and you loved it, then you shouldn’t have given that mothaf*cka up. You should have fought for California, goddamnit, since you love it.”

He went on to the oldest of slights, “So if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*ck over there,” oddly acknowledging in the same breath that blacks had often been told to go back to Africa.

Critics were quick to point out that we did not “give up” California, but rather that the United States was quick to take advantage of the toll that Mexico had taken in kicking out other colonizers a few years before the US invaded. In fact, California was lost in a bloody, bloody war, and was not “given up.”

Others pointed out that Williams was pouring fuel on a very hot fire in that his comments were made in Arizona, one of the most anti-Mexican states in the country, and a breeding ground for KKK and Nazi type groups. Williams, they said, was using the same language that these groups used in their rallies.

Some suggested that he had broken unwritten rules of minority solidarity, and others wondered aloud where the black community was to denounce of their own lost souls.

As for me, I remained amazed at the number of people that responded so quickly and loudly to this comedian, someone with no formal power or position. In essence, it reminded me of something that I had overlooked in those first few days of the news breaking, and frankly something that I had forgotten about. In this celebrity-driven culture, it is often the celebrities that have the power to inspire action and reaction in the people. In the end, I just wondered where our celebrities were hiding during all of this mess.

From early 1942, when Germans began deporting Polish Jews to killing centers, the situation of Judenrat leaders became morally unbearable. There were incidents where Judenräte were forced to prepare lists of deportees, while the Jewish ghetto police, which by this time usually operated directly under German command, was forced to assist in the actual evictions

I guess they were just enforcing the law? I wonder if stuff like this still happens today.

But still left to be considered are an actual definition of “serious,” which seems to include low-level offenses that even a “legal” immigrant could not get deported for, or if due process is still out the window for accused, eligible to bond out of jail and without deportation orders, kind of folks. That’s just to name a couple of scenarios.