best and brightest

As the DREAM Act goes down in flames and Congress continues to cower before the restrictionist lobby, it was encouraging last night to sit at the New York office of a major law firm in a room overflowing with young lawyers learning how to represent detainees swept up in the latest raids in Long Island and elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area. The tactics ICE is using in their “Return to Sender” raids are like something out of 1984 or Stalin-era Soviet Union. Breaking down doors in the middle of the night, terrorizing young children, violating DHS regulations, trampling the Constitution—these are your taxpayer dollars at work in today’s Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency. It is heartening to see the reaction to these raids among professionals with the skills and resources to do something about it. In many ways, it is a losing battle, as ICE does its best to ship detainees off to other states to disrupt their constitutional right to counsel, and then moves quickly to deport them with a minimum of legal process. But I saw some last night who will not let this injustice stand without a fight.