U.S. to Open Chinese Interment Camps

[kpete]

Friday :: March 17, 2006
U.S. to Open Chinese Interment Camps



From our compassionate Department of Homeland Security, via Duke at Daily Kos: The AP reports:

China is refusing to take back an estimated 39,000 citizens who have been denied immigration to the United States and have clogged detention centers at federal expense, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday.... Currently, 687 Chinese are being held in federal detention facilities, at a daily rate of $95 each, while some 38,000 have been released on bond or under a monitoring program, such as wearing an electronic surveillance bracelet, the Homeland Security Department said later yesterday. Illegal immigrants can be held for 180 days before they are released.

Chertoff also said Homeland Security would open detention facilities in the next few weeks to house entire families of illegal immigrants who hope to bring their children along in order to avoid jail time. "It'll be humane, but we're not going to let people get away with this," he said.

Chertoff's remarks comes as the Homeland Security Department aims to end its "catch and release" immigration policy by Oct. 1. After that date, all illegal immigrants will be held in U.S. detention centers until they can be returned to their nation of citizenry.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014328.html

[atreides1]

1. When they came for.....

When they came for the Chinese illegal immigrants,
I did nothing, for I wasn't Chinese, illegal, or an immigrant

You can guess how the rest goes

[mom cat]

20. Sure as hell do.

:grr:

[C_U_L8R]

22. They are coming for YOU

They are coming for all of us....
all of us who are a little different...
who don't believe the same as they do...
who don't go to the same church...
or look the same or who support
any group that opposes them.

The murderous thugs and thieves are in control...
that's a fact.

What will YOU do ?????

[Untermonkey]

27. Some of us will resist.

The rest of you don't own guns, so your on your own.

[lostinacause]

23. Putting things in perspective: they broke the law. Secondly, other

countries, such as Canada, have similar laws to this. When compared to things such as Hitler's Germany (for which what you have wrote is often referred to) this is nothing. When compared with some of the things that modern day governments do it is also nothing.

[converted_democrat]

25. Bullshit.. It is something.. Besides the facilities that they are putting

these folks in, they are building more.. KBR just got the contract a couple months back.. These people can't be trusted, they've proven it themselves.. It will start out with "illegals," and then it will move on to the undesirables and dissenters.. You don't have to be very bright to see where this is headed.. They are getting people used to the idea by putting the "illegals" in, and then when everyone is nice and desensitized they'll start putting the dissenting citizenry in there, "for their own good.." Mark my words..

[UpInArms]

26. here's more on that

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/022106a.html

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said.

Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.”

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

<snip>

Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

<snip>

Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Holy crap, there it is. That explains the camps going up. That's....

...truly, truly concerning. Concerning is a pale word- I can't think of the word yet.

This move is a calumny on American Liberty.

PB

[Karenina]

7. From Tante K's Keller

Empty Promises
riverfronttimes.com | originally published: February 20, 2002

Missouri has been pouring millions into prisons that aren't being used. But stay tuned: If politicians have their way, there will be plenty of inmates to go around.
BY BRUCE RUSHTON

Locals say the lights always burn at Missouri's largest prison, a sprawling 210-acre complex on the outskirts of Bonne Terre. Scores of orange bulbs, mounted on tall poles, fire up the winter sky and can be seen for miles.
With enough power to turn night into day, the lights make the new Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Center as obvious a landmark as the towering 32-acre mound of lead-mine tailings left behind by the St. Joe lead company. The 2 million-ton dirt heap and a huge underground cavity are the old lead company's legacy to Bonne Terre. Today the abandoned mine, dubbed Billion Gallon Lake, is the world's largest freshwater diving resort, attracting notice from scuba magazines and National Geographic.

Resort or no, Bonne Terre is far from a vacation playland. The town can't afford a new pump for an artificial lake that went dry this winter -- nature lovers had to stare at a muddy hole for weeks until rain filled it. The public schools are the biggest employer. There's a cluster of fast-food restaurants, gas stations and video stores at the highway interchange, but several downtown storefronts are boarded up. Bonne Terre officials thought they'd found the solution to the town's money problems when the state decided to build a $168 million penitentiary that would bring more than 800 jobs. Then there'd be plenty of money for paving potholes and sprucing up the park, they figured.

They figured wrong.

Six months after construction was completed, the prison in Bonne Terre sits empty, a sobering lesson on the fiscal consequences of prison construction that has cost Missouri taxpayers nearly a half-billion dollars since 1994. During the past dozen years, the state's corrections budget has more than doubled, benefiting concrete-pouring contractors and politicians such as the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, who led the push for new prisons while billing himself as a crime-fighter. With the prison-building spree near an end, the state now says it doesn't have enough money to open the Bonne Terre lockup, designed to house the state's most dangerous inmates.

<HUMUNGOUS SNIP>

Inevitably the prison will open. It's just a question of when. "I can't imagine -- I can't imagine -- the state walking away from a commitment like that," the mayor says. Beyond that, the future is uncertain.

*********

The Gatekeeper: Watch on the INS
by Alisa Solomon
Detainees Equal Dollars
The Rise in Immigrant Incarcerations drives a prison boom
August 14 - 20, 2002

t was a shaky spring for the correctional workers of Hastings, Nebraska (pop. 24,064), as the stagnation in the nation's prison population and the increasingly high costs of incarceration jostled the sleepy town, some two hours' drive from Lincoln. On April 9, the 84 employees of the Hastings Correctional Center were told that the 186-bed facility would be closing at the end of June. State funds were scraping bottom, and the $2.5 million annual price tag for the prison was too big a burden to carry. "We really didn't know what we would do," says Jim Morgan, who had been working at HCC for 15 years and lives to this day in the house where he was born. "There aren't a lot of job opportunities out here, and most of us have homes and kids and couldn't even think about moving somewhere else." For two months, the workers scrambled, filling out applications at nearby meatpacking and cardboard-container plants and anticipating long hours in the unemployment office.

Then salvation came from, of all places, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Days after HCC closed as a state prison in June, it reopened as an INS detention center.

"It's a win-win," says Morgan. The INS is desperate for more beds for its ever expanding detainee population. And the state of Nebraska, collecting $65 per detainee per day from the INS, rakes in more than $1 million a year over and above the cost of running the place.

County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a "cash crop."

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0233/solomon.php

[CountAllVotes]

3. totally shameless kick!

:kick: :kick: :kick:

[helderheid]

6. keep it up - this is mind blowing!

[jimshoes]

4. Wow, how long has this been

going on with Chinese immigrants? This is the first I've heard anything about it.

[helderheid]

5. HOLY SHIT

[Neil Lisst]

8. most underreported story!!

39,000 Chinese are in prison while 5 million Mexicans are working at retailers and construction sites?

[Kailassa]

9. We've been doing that in Australia for years.

It's one of the things I am most ashamed about in Australia.

Everyone should realize, from the outset, that this will involve babies and children of all ages, handicapped people and the mentally ill. Not every illegal immigrant can be repatriated, it is conceivable that these people, their children, and babies they bear in the camps will be locked away for life.

And, as the late night advertisers say, "that's not all you get for your money, folks."

We have had quite a few cases now of legitimately settled Australians being dragged off to these camps and locked away for years, and even deported. We have had children as young as six dragged out of their schools in the middle of the day and sent off to these camps because their parents were supposedly illegals. We have children who will most likely be traumatised for life from seeing rapes and attempted suicides inside these horrible, isolated, contractor run Hell-holes.

I am so sickened by what our governments do to people. Never forget, when we allow this to be done to anyone, we have no right to be surprised or upset when it one day happens to us too.

[Solly Mack]

13. Thank you. For providing us with a glimpse of what does happen

Under a government that tortures people as a matter of policy, Americans can expect this very ugly business to just get uglier.

[jasmeel]

10. Check this part out!

"And if they can't be returned because their countries won't take them? Congress is planning on indefinite detention, see Senator Arlen Spector's proposed immigration bill and James "The Menace" Sensenbrenner's House version, H.R. 4437 .

Section 602 of HR 4437 would permit indefinite detention of an increased broad class of non-citizens, including:

* those with a contagious disease
* any non-citizen convicted of an "aggravated felony," (see above)
* non-citizens whose release would pose foreign policy problems
* non-citizens charged even with very minor immigration violations who, based on secret evidence, are deemed a national security risk.<snip>

Is this the foot in the door technique? It starts with the pesky illegal immigrants.....then dissenters based on secret evidence???

[Solon]

12. What. The. FUCK!!!!!!

Especially that last one, but the last point really pisses me off. So you get some Chinese, Eastern European, or another nations kids that are KIDNAPPED for purposes of sexual exploitation and are illegally smuggled here, and are technically violating our laws through no actions of their own, and what the fuck will happen to them? They get locked up for life? Does this proposed law change refugee requirements?

[Kailassa]

14. Scenario for next federal elections.

1. Make a few towns sick and call it bird flu.

2. Cancel election and institute military rule because of bird flu.

3. Lock up everyone who complains in an internment camp and tell the rest of America these people were sick and they have to be locked away to keep the rest of America safe.

4. Infect the camps with bird flu to give substance to the lies, and publicise really gross pictures of the deaths to freak out the rest of America and keep them grateful for the government's protection.

And there will be a new synonym for the mindless happiness of Republicans: "schadenfreude"

[Cobalt Violet]

28. Did you see V? n/t

[suffragette]

35. I think that foot was put in the door with Real ID

which was another Sensenbrenner creation. It contained many elements targeting undocumented immigrants, including eliminating habeas corpus review.
Looks like Sensenbrenner is working on expanding the harsh provisions of this.

Edited for typo

[in_cog_ni_to]

Uhhhh....China doesn't give a shit what happens to those people.

What does Chertoff plan on doing? Gassing them? It costs $95 a day in federal detention facilities. How much will it cost to care for them in the internment camps? Are they planning on starving them? I wonder how they plan on saving $95?:scared:

[Hapameli]

11. And once all the non-whites are in camps, bye bye to abortion for good...

Gotta create the new great white race, ya know. American society is just another thoroughbred horse to the eugenicists.

[Kailassa]

15. I really don't believe the government cares what colour you were.

They have invented new colours, fat, lazy, unwanted, stupid, and democrat-liberal, and trained the press to use them.

Disagree with the administration and their puppy-dog press will gleefully paint you all their favourite colours, and Red America will praise the lord in joy while America's remaining brain-cells are extinguished in these trash-can camps.

[BlueStorm]

19. That's how I see it too...

all of the "undesirables" will be locked away. Perhaps enslaved and tortured... Minorities will be locked away somewheres as well.

Damn... what was that one book called that had this kind of scenario?

Blue

[FiveGoodMen]

16. If sane, law-abiding people ever regained power...

...I can think of a good use for those camps.

[troubleinwinter]

17. from the article:

"...it is quite possible that all 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country could shortly end up in internment camps no different from the refugee camps we see throughout the rest of the world. We just never thought it could happen here.

Guess who has the contract on building the new detention centers? Kellogg, Root & Brown,a Halliburton subsidiary."

TWELVE MILLION internees in this country. Chertoff says, "It'll be humane..." Gitmo is "humane" in his view.

[Kailassa]

18. "It'll be humane..."

They are the most frightening words associated with these detention centres.

"Humane" is not used in regard to how you keep someone alive.

"Humane" is used to describe methods of killing.

[lostinacause]

24. They are in prison. There are ways that people can be kept that are

not humane. Middle Eastern jails, for example, don't treat their prisoners humanely.

(For clarification most countries in the Middle East, regardless of there relationship with the west, treats prisoners poorly.)

[shance]

21. This is how it starts, isn't it?

n/t

[donsu]

29. how nuts! Mexicans can walk across and get benefits, Chinese jailed

america is but a memory

[suffragette]

30. A return to Angel Island?

Years ago, I stumbled upon "Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island" at a used book sale.
It documents, through photos, personal histories and poems, the internment of Chinese immigrants at Angel Island, which is in San Francisco Bay. It is a powerful book, chronicling the situation that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the impact of this on the Chinese and the memories and poems of the detainees.
It's shameful that we are apparently returning, in action if not by specific mandate, to a similar process.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. Delete

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus

New addendum: Unless they happen to be non-whites or non-wealthy or non-professional.

[HereSince1628]

33. Odd that. It takes DHS $34K to keep a person, more than 2X minimum wage

Maybe the homeless should go to Wal-Mart, steal some eyeliner and make like a Mongolian???????????

Sounds like 3 hots, a cot and a warm shower....:shrug:


Great job Chertof!!! You are proving NO ONE can live in the USA at the prevailing minimum wage.

[rucky]

34. so THAT'S what the super-secret Halliburton camps are for.

We won't stand for this.

[noonwitch]

36. If they are not criminals, why not admit them and give them asylum?

I thought that our country gave asylum to those fleeing communism.

[More Than A Feeling]

37. So the next time someone compares the Republican Party to the Nazis...

No one can shoot back "at least they haven't grabbed the undesirables and put them into camps."

Contagious disease, huh? How many Republicans think homosexuality is a contagious disease?:scared:

A big fuck you goes out to China for letting their people be subjected to this.

[Javaman]

38. Rex-84 n/t