OP-ED: Inhumane treatment of immigrants must be stopped
Last weekend landscaper Narciso Barranco was at work at an IHOP restaurant in Santa Anna, Calif., according to a CNN report, when a group of armed men in masks and camouflage clothing confronted him. Frightened, he tried to run away and then reportedly tried to defend himself with his weed wacker. Footage shared with CNN shows six men forcing Barranco to the pavement and repeatedly punching him as he was being handcuffed.
According to the man’s son, Alejandro, 25, a U.S. Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, his father came to the U.S. illegally in the 1990s but has no criminal record. Two other Barranco sons are currently serving in the Marines.
The thugs who took down the middle-aged landscaper were Border Patrol agents. In a telephone call with his son from a detention facility, Barranco said that he was injured, hungry and thirsty, kept in a cage with scores of others using a single toilet, but that he was anxious for someone to return to the IHOP to finish his work.
A number of the people showing up to protest these ICE raids and at other demonstrations around the country are also wearing masks – perhaps because of the possibility of tear gas but also to protect their identity. That sort of anonymity is cowardly; as cowardly as posting virulent, unsigned comments on social media.
And it is equally cowardly for these ICE agents and their proxies – in their wannabe soldier getups – to conceal their identity and hide behind masks.
It was all too common in the old Soviet Union for citizens to be grabbed off the street and thrown into detention without any legal process. Now it is happening in our country, and too many of us – especially our elected representatives – are sheepishly accepting this flagrantly un-Constitutional behavior.
I fear for the Haitians living here legally under temporary protective status who have been ordered to leave the country in a matter of weeks. Their home country is in turmoil, ripped apart by political violence, run by murderous gangs who profit from kidnapping. For too many of them, returning to Haiti is a death sentence.
And now, with the approval of our Supreme Court, they could be sent to another country, say war-torn Sudan, to fend for themselves in another foreign hellscape.
Few argue with the effort to deport illegals who are violent criminals, but most of the low-hanging fruit being picked by ICE agents these days are farm laborers and construction workers, not here by the rules but obeying the laws and filling the gap in our labor market.
The Trump administration is now building detention centers – concentration camps, if you will – to house 100,000 detainees awaiting deportation. The “Everglades Alcatraz,” just one of them, is an abandoned airstrip surrounded by alligators and pythons, to prevent the illegal migrants from escaping the baking trailers in which they will be housed.
Is this the sort of place we would like landscaper Narciso Barranco to be sent?
Parker Burroughs is the retired executive editor of the Observer-Reporter.