A local news station in Denver, Colorado does an excellent job covering something relatively new on the US political scene: mass detention centers. According to this $385 million Halliburton contract, our government expects to use and build more of these large scale detention centers to handle an “emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

From their coverage during the Democratic National Convention, we can assume these fences will also be used to detain protestors who march outside of Denver’s sanctioned Free Speech Zones. These “processing centers” are the perfect weapon for any future power-hungry administration that require a built-in infrastructure to suppress mass dissent, all built underneath the political cover of anti-immigration policies. Here’s a map showing where over 32,000 immigrants are detained on any given day. The alphabetic rows of empty cages in this Denver warehouse just gives me the creeps. See for yourself by watching the clip on YouTube:

Recent raids in Postville, Iowa and Laurel, Mississippi involved the detention of 400 and 350 workers respectfully. Reports have also circulated that in the event of a hurricane hitting Texas, evacuees would need to prove their citizenship to avoid detention and deportation. We should be more respectful to members of our community who work and contribute to our country, than to lock them up in detention centers and ship them away from their families. Have we no sense of our past, to realize that immigration has always been our future?

These detention centers must be shut down. Further, we should hold any new leadership accountable so that they renounce the mass dentention centers, mass immigrant arrests and suppression of dissent policies of the failed Bush presidency. Make no mistake, a government that detains innocent people in mass detention facilities has the capability to detain you as well.

History has shown us many times over what happens when a country allows its government to pick and choose which of its inhabitants belong. It never ends well. Our culture should not rely on locking up large groups of people in unknown/undocumented mass detention facilities to enforce an unfair system that offers only potential citizenship, while the same detention centers become potential weapons of mass suppression.

The new citizenship test (CNN, MSNBC) became law on October 1, 2008. New test, but same broken naturalization system (PDF from Reason Magazine).

Also on October 1st, the United States has stationed a military unit for domestic use to serve as an on-call emergency unit. “This new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.” Let’s hope the third infantry first brigade combat team serves only in an emergency capacity and not used to round up immigrants, or to quell the public’s dissatisfaction with its government or the upcoming election results.

Please register to vote and please vote for Obama.

tags: detention, dissent, election, immigration, detention-centers, obama, naturalization, free-speech, citizenship

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Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 am

topic: personal