El Paso: Booming Military/Security Center

(Fourth in BorderLines' series of Border Industrial Security Complex)

At the recent Border Security Conference at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), the city’s Regional Economic Development Corporation (REDCO) had an exhibition table along with an array of companies specializing in security and defense. REDCO lists Military/Defense/Homeland Security as its top target industry. That’s understandable given the tremendous growth of military and homeland security contracts experienced in the last eight years. REDCO boasts that El Paso already hosts such major military/security industries as Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed-Martin, and it says that El Paso is now “Taking the lead in America’s Border Security” through new “homeland security research and development.” The new blend of military and homeland security industries was evident at UTEP’s conference, whose fiscal sponsors, with the exception of REDCO, all represented this emerging military/security industry: SAIC, Raytheon, ManTech, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and CSC. In addition to these sponsors, more than a dozen other industries exhibited their homeland security wares to conference attendees. Since 2000 government military and homeland security contracts have been raining down on El Paso. Military and border-security industries are sprouting up all over the sprawling city, contributing mightily to El Paso’s booming economy amid the national recession. In 2000 DOD awarded area-based industries 254 contracts – worth $304.7 million. Last year the city benefited from more than four times as many contracts – 1,156 contracts – amounting to $575.6 million. An especially good year for area military contracting was 2006, when DOD signed 1,237 contracts amounting to $863 million. Over the last eight years the number and dollar amount of DOD contracts have risen steadily, helping to put El Paso on the national map as a center for weapons and security development. In the military sector alone, El Paso industries have been awarded more than $4 billion in contracts. Going into 2009, more than 830 military contractors were doing business in the area. From 2000 to 2008 city military contractors were awarded 8,313 military contracts worth $4.6 billion. While $4.6 billion is not small change and places El Paso among the major military development centers in Texas – the nation’s second largest recipient of defense contracts (closely following Virginia) – it pales in comparison with the amount of military business in the Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Houston metropolitan areas. From 2000 to 008, Texas garnered $256 billion in military contracts, with the annual value of contracts rising from $5.7 billion in 2000 to $36.6 billion in 2008.

Blockading the Border

Book Review Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation That Remade Immigration Enforcement

To understand where we now stand with respect to border-control and immigration- enforcement policies, it is helpful to step back and see how we got here. That is what border scholar Timothy Dunn does in his important new book about the politics of border control in the El Paso area. 


 Not so long ago in El Paso, like in other border towns, you could easily see the daily flow of unauthorized immigrants into the United States. Until the mid-1990s most illegal border crossers took the easiest route over to the other side – right through the hearts of the twin border cities. 


Thousands of Mexicans crossed illegally every day, returning home to Mexico in the evening from jobs in the United States. Others who lived in the Mexican interior or came from other countries took buses north to the Mexican border towns, crossed into the adjoining U.S. towns, and then spread into the U.S. interior. Until the mid-1990s, when the Border Patrol mounted operations to stanch the immigrant flow through U.S. border towns, overwhelmed agents caught only a small percentage of the illegal border crossers. 


Once across the border, illegal immigrants easily melded into Mexican-American communities. Frustrated Border Patrol agents in El Paso oftentimes not knowing who was in the country legally, regularly harassed residents of El Segundo Barrio, a Mexican-American neighborhood in the downtown area abutting the border. 


In 1992, working in conjunction with the local Border Rights Coalition, students and staff of the neighborhood’s Bowie High School brought a civil rights suit against the Border Patrol citing routine harassment and abuses. By highlighting longtime community grievances against the Border Patrol, the lawsuit spurred the new Border Patrol Chief Silvestre Reyes to start meeting regularly with community activists and addressing their complaints. 


In 1993 Reyes mounted Operation Blockade, which intensively deployed Border Patrol agents along the border within the city limits, successfully halting most urban border crossers and deflecting most illegal crossborder traffic to more sparsely inhabited areas on the edge of the city. 


As Dunn documents, El Pasoans, tired and frustrated by immigrant streams through their neighborhoods and by Border Patrol harassment of citizens and legal immigrants, overwhelmingly supported Operation Blockade – which was later renamed Operation Hold the Line. Community organizing against widespread civil rights violations by Border Patrol agents proved a major factor in persuading the Border Patrol in the El Paso district to adopt a new strategy – one that was described officially as “prevention through deterrence.” 


 Operation Blockade/Hold the Line, although initially resisted by the national Border Patrol office Washington, later became the prototype of more intensive border control operations in urban areas because of its success in diverting immigration flows to outlying areas. As recounted by Dunn, the Border Patrol’s 1994 strategy statement –which first used the term “prevention through deterrence” – noted that the agency’s “national strategy builds on El Paso’s success.” 


Operation Blockade’s model, as described by Dunn, took of the form of the “massing of enforcement resources at traditionally high-volume, mainly urban unauthorized crossing areas” inspired the launching of Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, Operation Rio Grande in the lower Rio Grande Valley, and Operation Safeguard in Arizona. 


 Operation Blockade Accomplishments 


Other than spurring other copycat border blockades elsewhere along the border, what were the enduring results of Operation Blockade? One was the predictable diversion of immigration flows to what the Border Patrol described as “hostile terrain” in its 1994 strategy statement. 


Dunn superbly chronicles this cause-and-effect relationship, using the El Paso example of increased immigrant traffic along the western edge of the city and farther west into the desert of southern New Mexico. 


 The Border Patrol quickly responded by constructing a new border fence on the western edge of the city, which was roundly opposed in El Paso, largely because so obviously tarnished the city’s long-cherished image as a binational metropolis (with Ciudad Juarez). Opposition to the fence also tapped rising concerns that the new “prevention through deterrence” strategy was severely impacting the livelihood and rights of undocumented Mexicans. 


Although a palpable concern even during the civil rights organizing against the Border Patrol around the Bowie High School case, the issue of the rights and welfare of unauthorized border crossers was downplayed in the interests of making a strong civil rights argument against Border Patrol practices. This was the citizenship-nationalist framework for community organizing. 


 While accepting its tactical merits, Dunn argues for a human-rights framework for addressing border control issues. As he points out, Operation Blockade only partially succeeded in deterring immigration flows. The “hostile terrain” that characterizes most of the border environment away from the increasingly fortified urban border did not deter hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers. Determined to seek a better life and increasingly relying on border smugglers, immigrants have since the mid-1990s increasingly risked dangerous desert and mountain crossings. 


Complaints about abusive Border Patrol treatment of both legal borderland residents and illegal border crossers continue. But it has been the deaths of thousands of border crossers diverted into “hostile terrain” that has elevated the human rights issue along the border. 

While drowning deaths has long been a concern in the El Paso sector, Operation Blockade and heightening enforcement in the easily traversed border areas have resulted in steeply mounting number of immigrant deaths from exposure. From 1994 to 2007 there were 4,600 deaths reported, mostly from exposure. 


Border Enforcement Works 


Besides the diversion of immigrant flows, another long-term result of Operation Blockade has been an increased conviction, especially within government and among anti-immigrant sectors, that increased border enforcement works. Prior to Operation Blockade, border enforcement was widely regarded as a holding action with no real goal of stopping immigrant flows. 


However, the success in El Paso and in other urban areas in ending immigrant flows put in motion a serious of practices and policies that are now driven by a belief that “operational control” of the border is a real possibility. It is now commonly accepted that with sufficient numbers of Border Patrol agents and with enough border control infrastructure (mainly defenses and electronic surveillance), the Border Control can realistically hope to control the southern border – deterring or detaining most illegal border crosssers. 


Dunn doesn’t delve deeply into the possibilities of effective border control operations along the entire border. Rather he warns against “border enforcement fetishism” and predicts that border security will be an unrealizable goal without a holistic human-rights framework for immigration policy. 


In the book’s conclusion, the author warns that if drastically increased border enforcement really starts working, “it might fail in larger, more important ways that we can hardly anticipate.” Among the consequences of increasingly effective enforcement, according to Dunn, are labor shortages in the United States, noting the country’s aging population. 


 He also warns that border enforcement may soon threaten the stability of Mexico and by extension U.S. national security. A dramatic reduction in Mexican immigration “would adversely affect the Mexican economy and also quite possibly Mexican political and social stability.” 


For Dunn, a human-rights framework for understanding and resolving the immigration problem leads to his support for an “open borders” position, albeit accompanied by an array of recommended policies that would regulate the push and pull factors driving immigration. 


Finally, he warns that growing border enforcement fetishism may lead to increased military involvement in policing at the border, which would have grave implications both for immigrants and citizens. The book’s last words commend “an active civil society on both sides of the border” as the best “remedy” against aggressive enforcement practices. 


How to Frame Policy Agenda: Citizen/National v. Human Rights/International 


Blockading the Border and Human Rights is an excellent starting place to examine the limits and possibilities of the sometimes competing frameworks of citizen rights and international human rights with respect to immigration policy. Dunn makes a strong case for the international human rights perspective. But what are the prospects of winning widespread public support for the type of traditionally progressive framework that Dunn advocates? 


According to Dunn:

“A broad human rights approach, ironically, offers the best prospect for enhanced national security at the border and beyond, as well as improved well-being more broadly. This entails reducing undocumented immigration through increased legal immigration opportunities to meet U.S. labor needs (and legalization of undocumented immigrants already here), really addressing key economic problems in migrant-sending countries, focusing on the lower and middle classes, and increasing worker protections and organizing in the United States.”

The deep economic recession and the accompanying massive job loss (which have occurred since Dunn’s book went to the publisher) make a human rights/open borders approach to border control and immigration policy much harder to sell to the U.S. public and policy community. 


One is left wondering, then, whether a progressive tweaking of the citizenship-national sovereignty might be a more pragmatic and hopeful option. It’s an open question, though, whether it’s possible to successfully frame progressive policy solutions -- including legalization, labor protections, full employment, more liberal political asylum and refugee policies, and less restrictive immigration visas – as being citizen-centered, focused on U.S. national interests, and at the same time respectful of civil and human rights.

With his meticulous research, abundant personal interviews, and thoughtful concluding remarks, Timothy Dunn provides the historical background we so badly need to help us in the search for border solutions not blockades.

Border Security and the Academy

Even before the March 2003 opening of the Department of Homeland Security plans were underway to involve universities in the new effort for homeland security. Congress, as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, authorized the new department to “designate a university-based system for several university-based centers for homeland security.” Today, there is a network of universities that receives DHS funding to collaborate with the government to, as the act stipulated, “enhance the Nation’s homeland security.” It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, with universities benefiting from large grants from a rapidly expanding part of the federal government and with the government benefiting from the sponsored research of hundreds of university scholars. But there has yet been no overall evaluation of how this DHS-academy cooperative venture – now six years old – has contributed to improving homeland security. Since the creation of DHS there have been rising questions and concerns about departmental operations, including issues of waste, over-reliance on private contractors, and widespread abuses and excesses in immigration enforcement and border control. Given the failures and controversies surrounding the department’s Secure Border Initiative – including the border fence and high-tech surveillance systems (“virtual fence”) – there is good cause to question the involvement of universities in the support and development of DHS border security infrastructure and strategies. The huge sums of DHS funds flowing to private contractors such as Boeing also raise questions about the degree to which research and education about border issues is shaped by monetary incentives. Within a historical context, the new relationships among government, industry, and the academy that have emerged after Sept. 11 as part of the Bush administration’s “global war against terrorism” are not dissimilar to the complex of government-business-military-university relationship that emerged as part of the cold war, what President Dwight Eisenhower termed the “military-industrial complex.” Centers of Excellence The new DHS-academy condominium includes “centers of excellence.” Today, there are 13 DHS university-based centers of excellence. Through DHS’s Science & Technology Directorate and the department’s Office of University Programs, DHS aims “to leverage the independent thinking and ground-breaking capabilities of the Nation's colleges and universities” with its centers of excellence. The newest DHS university research is the Center of Excellence in Command, Control and Interoperability (C2I), which is led by Purdue University and Rutgers University. According to DHS, this center will “create the scientific basis and enduring technologies needed to analyze massive amounts of information from multiple sources to more reliably detect threats to the security of the nation and its infrastructures, and to the health and welfare of its populace.” The August 10 visit of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to El Paso to meet with the and to speak at the 2009 Border Security Conference will likely highlight the role of one of these centers of excellence, namely the National Center for Border Security and Immigration. The leading university partners in NCBSI are the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and the University of Arizona. According to UTEP’s border security center, it aims to “stimulate, coordinate, leverage, and utilize the unique intellectual capital in the academic community to address current and future homeland security challenges, and educate and inspire the next generation homeland security workforce.” What is more, the DHS-sponsored and financed center will “foster a homeland security culture within the academic community through research and educational programs.” DHS says that NCBSI is “developing technologies, tools, and advanced methods to balance immigration and commerce with effective border security, as well as assess threats and vulnerabilities, improve surveillance and screening, analyze immigration trends, and enhance policy and law enforcement efforts.” NCBSI was launched at the 2008 Border Security Conference at UTEP, a conference officially sponsored by Cong. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) and UTEP and financially sponsored by major military and security contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics. Last year DHS provided UTEP a six-year $6 million grant to open the border security center. Also in 2008 UTEP landed a $1 million start-up grant from the Department of Defense to open its Center for Defense Systems Research. Although a DOD-financed center, CDSR also has a border security focus. Among the center’s partners are Customs and Border Protection, Electronic Warfare Solutions, and the major military contractor SAIC. Both NCBSI and CDSR were until recently headed by founding director Ret. Brig. Gen. Jose Riojas, who was named by the Obama administration for a position in Veteran Affairs. Both centers fall under UTEP’s Office for Strategic Initiatives. Before joining UTEP as vice-president for strategic initiatives, Riojas was commander of Joint Task Force North, headquartered at Ft. Bliss in El Paso. Also located at UTEP is another government-funded center of excellence – focusing on intelligence. It’s the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence, which is one of a network of university centers funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Backed by a multimillion dollar grant from the Director of National Intelligence, this center of academic excellence aims to “build a workforce prepared for 21st Century challenges.” Next: DHS Feeds Booming Security/Defense Industry

Is There A Border Security Industrial Complex?

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 set in motion a security-focused approach to border and immigration issues. As part of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the post-Sept. 11 homeland security also gave birth to what some scholars and border observers are calling the “Border Security Industrial Complex.” The term, now used by border scholar Timothy Dunn and others, may at first seem overheated, a facile take-off on the concern that President Dwight Eisenhower expressed about the “military-industrial complex.” How, after all, does the expansion of the Border Patrol and border control infrastructure relate to the pervasive links between DOD and major military contractors like General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Boeing? And how is the Pentagon remotely comparable to the much smaller and less powerful DHS? Does this complex exercise a similar degree of influence in public life? As it turns out, the Border Security Industrial Complex, while not a term that slips off the tongue, has much in common with its older brother and is equally deserving of attention, concern and perhaps alarm. Eisenhower, upon concluding his presidency in 1961, warned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.” While the term was original, the concept of a newly powerful complex of industrialists, politicians, and military leaders gaining control over foreign policy and economic priorities came from the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of the influential 1956 book Power Elite. Along the southwestern U.S. border, the post-9/11 commitment to increased border security has spurred a major flow of federal dollars for newly fortified ports-of-entry, a tripling of Border Patrol agents, construction of border fences, deployment of high-tech surveillance infrastructure, and support of local law enforcement. Most of the funding influx comes from DHS, but Department of Justice and Pentagon programs have also contributed to the border security boom over the past eight years. In the borderlands, you cannot miss the border security build-up – which some observers note has served as a multibillion dollar economic stimulus to the poor region and others deprecate as militarization or a police state. Whatever one’s perspective, there is certainly a new border security complex that is changing life in the borderlands. But why the term “border security industrial complex”? That’s due to increasing concern that this complex is provides little real security, is skewed by corporate interests, and is exercising undue and unwarranted influence – much like the military-industrial complex. In the spirit of not taking anything for granted and not letting the weight of dollars “endanger our liberties and democratic process,” as Eisenhower so wisely cautioned, the possible rise of a border security industrial complex deserves examination. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano will be delivering an address at the 2009 Border Security Conference on August 11 at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). The conference will bring together politicians, high government officials, industry executives, and the academy – the same type of configuration that constituted the military-industrial complex. The conference’s financial sponsors are all high-tech defense and security industries, including Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and SAIC. Aside from organizing the annual border security conference, UTEP is also deeply involved in border security issues through its National Center for Border Security and Immigration and its Center for Defense Systems Analysis, the former funded by DHS and the latter by DOD. Next: Homeland Security and the Academy

The Snakehead -- Immigrant Smugglers and the American Dream

Book Review The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream By Patrick Radden Keefe Doubleday, 2009 For those accustomed to viewing the immigration issue through the prism of Latin American immigration flows, The Snakehead offers another perspective. Unlike traditional Latin American illegal immigration to the United States, Chinese illegal immigration has historically been arranged by smuggling operations. When the smuggling ship Golden Venture was caught on a shoal outside New York City in 1993, few immigration activists and advocates paid attention to the tragedy of the some 300 Chinese immigrants aboard who struggled ashore and then were immediately channeled into the government’s detention and deportation system. It’s an engaging story, skillfully and beautifully told by Radden Keefe. By no means does the author pose as an authority in immigration policy, but he does offer some helfpful observations in the book’s epilogue. He notes that most of the world’s international migrants “tend to venture from the preindustrial to the industrial, from the third world to the first.” Without explicitly pointing to the new trends in Latin American immigration to the United States, Radden Keefe observes that immigration and border control results in something of a paradox for immigration authorities: “[I]ntensified enforcement along the border has the perverse effect of bolstering the human smuggling trade, because when it becomes difficult for individuals to smuggle themselves into a country they are obliged to turn to the experts.” The author points to the need for international enforcement mechanisms against human smuggling, such as UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, with its 2004 Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air. Mexico is a signatory to the protocol, but has done little to halt the proliferation of organized human smuggling operations on its northern border. In Snakehead, Radden Keefe also stresses the need for a just and efficient political asylum system in the United States. Current regulations force petitioners for political asylum to endure lengthy periods in immigrant detention centers until their cases are decided. With more cases being decided negatively, asylum seekers are now routinely deported after months or even years in immigrant prisons. And as the pointedly observes, “[W]ithout some effort to oblige asylum officers and immigration judges to harmonize the bases upon which they will grant asylum, it appears that the fate of individuals seeking refuge in this country will continue to be determined not by any coherent policy or sense of justice but ultimately by the luck of the draw.” Unfortunately, this call for a fair asylum policy is not one that receives much attention in the debate for immigration reform. If you are looking for a book that is a enlightening and engaging trip into a unknown world – an underworld – The Snakehead is a good choice this summer.

Border Security, Homeland Security, & Now "Community Security"

The immigration system was badly broken before it became the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. But now that immigration is the province of Homeland Security the challenge of getting immigration right has become much greater. No longer simply a matter of determining a regulatory system, the immigration crisis was considered a matter of national security. Within this new security context, the crackdown on immigration gained momentum and has proved more difficult to oppose. Over the past eight years the deepening crackdown on immigrants has evolved within this new security framework. One of the latest DHS initiatives, Secure Communities, builds on the overblown association of immigrants and security threats. Created in the wake of Sept. 11 to better protect the country against attacks by foreign terrorists, DHS now believes it is also responsible for community security. It’s the latest case of mission creep at DHS. DHS, through its immigration and border control agencies, has in the last eight years mounted an array of initiatives—including Operation Community Shield, the 287(g) program, National Fugitive Operations, and Secure Communities, which promise to increase public safety by joining with local police to target immigrants. The Secure Communities program highlights four fundamental trends in immigration enforcement: 1. Increasing merger of criminal and immigration law enforcement. 2. Rapid expansion of federal/local partnerships in immigration enforcement. 3. Spearheading the use of identification technology across the spectrum of law enforcement agencies. 4. Evolving justifications and mission goals for a crackdown on immigrants, both on the border and in the country's interior—including protecting national security, upholding "rule of law," enforcing immigration law and controlling the border as preconditions for comprehensive reform, and, most recently, securing communities. These four trends embodied in the Secure Communities program raise concerns about the new directions of immigration enforcement, including the following: * Categorization of increasing numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, as "criminal aliens" to increase immigrant removals, when most do not represent a threat to public safety. * Clogging the already overburdened criminal justice system with immigrant prosecutions. * Loss of community trust in local law enforcement and resulting threat to public safety as police become instruments of immigration enforcement. * Undermining individual privacy and rights, as government extends data-mining and identity checks without any clear focus either on real national security or public safety threats. * The deepening and expansion of the immigration enforcement apparatus without any accompanying commitment to immigration policy reform. * Rapid expansion of the Department of Homeland Security without a clear focus on protecting the country against truly dangerous people. The TransBorder Project of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy details the problems and dangers of Secure Communities in a new policy report titled “Community Security” Mission Creep, and sets for policy recommendations for a more responsible immigration enforcement policy. This is the third policy report on related themes of immigration enforcement. Also see: Immigrant Crackdown Joins Failed Wars on Crime and Drugs, and Restoring Integrity to the Immigration System.

Responsibility and False Hope from Obama Administration

Responsibility. That’s been a central message of the Obama candidacy and presidency. After the Bush years of government irresponsibility, special-interest policies, and ideologically driven wars and federal programs, Americans were ready for Obama’s promised “new era of responsibility.” But responsibility is a loaded term in the country’s political lexicon, and most often it’s associated with more with charges that social problems stem from individual irresponsibility than with an evaluation of the government’s responsibility to institute and enforce laws that improve social well-being. Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, the Obama administration has too often stressed the ideologically conservative message of responsibility – that is, individual responsibility, as distinct from social/governmental responsibility. This is especially true with respect to immigration. Rather than state clearly that the immigration crisis – namely an unsustainable system of immigration flows – is primarily the responsibility of the U.S. government and society, the Obama administration has deepened its commitment to enforcement policies that places the responsibility for the plight of the country’s 11 million (and declining) unauthorized immigrants primarily on the immigrants themselves. They broke the law by accepting work and working hard as business employees and household service workers. For the past few decades, the government has tolerated an immigration policy that is patently broken. Immigrants flowed into the country at increasing rates to fill jobs and to create small businesses, thereby helping the economy grow, as immigrants always have. But rather than reciprocating by offering legal status for these new workers and society members, government and business maintained an immigration enforcement system that kept these immigrants in the shadow of the law. Nor has government acted responsibility by proactively created a new immigration policy. Decade after decade, Congress and the White House have neglected their responsibility to back an immigration reform that would take immigration flows out of the shadows by creating systems that would be more responsible to the labor market, that would be more protective of workers, and that would acknowledge and legally integrate immigrants who are clearly constructive members of U.S. society. Responsibility is more about ethics than about law. By insisting that the government has the responsibility to enforce the law by detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, the Obama administration, like its predecessor administration, is justifying the immigrant crackdown in the name of the “rule of law.” If the administration were truly honest and responsible, Obama and DHS Secretary Napolitano would tell citizens and noncitizens alike that a broken law and failed system should not be used to disrupt society, divide communities, and break families. It is irresponsible. What’s more, it is not economically sustainable. In the past eight years the federal government has tripled the immigration enforcement and border control budget, spending tens of billions on creating an immigrant gulag of prisons, creating a police state in the northern and southern borderlands, and unleashing more than an hundred teams of immigration raiders. Not a responsible use of federal dollars, especially at a time when so many people are desperately in the need of work and government assistance. The Bush administration mounted the immigrant crackdown in response to the demands of the anti-immigrant zealots of the Republican Party and on trumped-up national security grounds. In contrast, the Obama administration in continuing the crackdown (with only slight fixes) while ignoring the reform demands from the Democratic Party’s grassroots progressive base and dressing the enforcement-first regime in ethics-free “rule of law” rhetoric. Get used to it. The immigrant crackdown has been institutionalized. President Obama and other Democratic Party leaders may in their heart of hearts believe that immigration reform that takes unauthorized immigrations out of the shadows would be best for the country and even best for the party. But they don’t now have – and show no signs of gaining – the political will and conviction to call an end to “enforcement first” practices and push through the kind of responsible, ethical reform law that is so badly needed. A steady attrition of the immigrant population is the result. It was part of the strategic plan of the immigration restrictionists, and has in effect become the law of the land. Immigrants without the requisite papers will for the foreseeable future need to seek temporary refuge in the diminishing shadows. Ideologues and conservatives are no longer running the immigration system. Lawyers and liberals are in charge, preaching systematic enforcement while offering false hope.