Today’s editorial in the New York Times highlights two of the most egregious sores on the American body politic—hatred of foreigners and a grotesquely swollen U.S. penal code. As part of its “We hate immigrants” campaign, the Bush Administration raided a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa and arrested, not the plant operators for hiring illegal immigrants, but the workers, charging them with “aggravated identity theft” (giving a false social security number).
According to the Times, the arrested workers (over 300 of them) are given the following choices: “They can admit their guilt to lesser charges, waive their rights, including the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, spend five months in prison, then be deported. Or, they can spend six months or more in jail without bail while awaiting a trial date, face a minimum two-year prison sentence and be deported anyway.”
Before the immigration issue blew up in its face last year, the Bush Administration had quietly discontinued any prosecutions involving the employment of illegal immigrants. Now it’s getting tough with a vengeance—a vengeance directed entirely at the workers. And it’s giving a demonstration of how the endlessly burgeoning U.S. penal code allows the government to throw virtually anyone in jail at will.
