Postville Ankle Bracelets

ICE claims that as part of its kinder and gentler approach to its raids, many arrestees are released with GPS ankle bracelets. One observer of the Postville raids doesn’t think this is kinder or gentler; he wrote this letter to the editor in response to the NY Times editorial “The Great Immigration Panic” that Kevin Johnson posted yesterday:
To the Editor:
When I visited Postville, Iowa, last week and met with workers who were arrested in the recent immigration raid there, I was outraged to learn that our government’s immigration policy is not simply misguided, it is criminal.  All of the women we spoke with, wearing humiliating G.P.S. bracelets that restrict their movement, were released to care for their children, while their husbands serve a five-month prison sentence. For these women and their children, that means five months with no possible source of income, and therefore no way to buy food or pay rent.  If it weren’t for the saintly work of the clergy at St. Bridget’s Church in Postville, there would be hundreds of women and children left homeless and starving. I, for one, already can’t recognize the country that allows this to happen.
Jonah Newman
Minneapolis, June 3, 2008

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