We Live In A Police State

Not in America?

[Editorial - Run Amok - NYTimes.com]

“Federal immigration squads with shotguns and automatic weapons forcing their way into citizens’ homes without warrants or lawful consent, shoving open doors and climbing through windows in predawn darkness, pulling innocent people from their beds, holding groggy occupants at gunpoint, taking people away without explanation — after invading the wrong house.

This is a true account of the depths to which the Bush administration sank in its twilight, when immigration enforcement was ramped up to a feverish extreme.

The details are in a report released Wednesday by the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. It describes a campaign of illegal home invasions waged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from 2006 to 2008 on Long Island and in New Jersey. The report, written by a panel led by Lawrence Mulvey, the police commissioner of Nassau County on Long Island, examined 700 arrest records obtained through Freedom of Information lawsuits, and found a shameful pattern of abuses.

The raids were supposed to be a hunt for gang members and other dangerous criminal fugitives, but two-thirds of those arrested were happenstance targets — Latinos with civil immigration violations. Although agents lacked judicial warrants, and thus could not legally enter private homes without a resident’s informed consent, they routinely did so anyway — in 86 percent of the Long Island cases studied and 24 percent of those in New Jersey. And while ICE was legally required to have reasonable suspicion before detaining and questioning anybody, in two-thirds of arrest reports studied, no explanation for the initial arrest was given.”

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The authorities behind this should be in jail. Where is the Justice Department?