Silver Spring A Sunday feature in the Washington Post had Obama rating his initial chances at election as 25-30%. He was wrong then, but he could be right now about re-election if he continues to alienate the burgeoning Hispanic base that was key to his victory. A professor in today’s Times called the situation for immigrants the “worst of both worlds,” meaning that immigrants were facing escalating enforcement with no concrete prospects for reform.
The front page article on the Times was based on the virtually below the radar actions, which they labeled “small” butsignificant by immigrant reform advocates in Los Angeles and New York City targeting Homeland Security andtherefore immigration chief copy, Janet Napolitano, as the problem. She danced around the issue of Arpaio in the Times, by pretending that the 287g subcontracted immigration enforcement to cities and counties might be too onerous for the Sheriff, who has publicly just scoffed at them thus far.
More devastating as a time bomb for the President and Napolitano might be the eruption of hunger strikes in a private prison in Louisiana that holds detainees who have been swept up in the immigrant bashing. Reports from the Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice as covered by Chris Kromm at the Institute for Southern Studies, hit the wire services and elsewhere this week about the sub-human conditions being allowed detainees in these private Homeland Security compounds.
I was shocked to read about Guantanamo conditions existing in Louisiana.
The lack of progress on reform and the steady tightening of the screws on immigrants that is now being allowed and encouraged by the Administration is no longer a well kept secret, and will not long be something that the Secretary can keep from bringing the President down unless there is action on all fronts now.
These kinds of reports will guarantee that the response will not be “small” for long!