Wait Untill We See The New Price Of Grapes

Path to Family Ruin and Deportation Can Start With a Traffic Stop: "The arrests of the men playing soccer in Putnam County in January might illustrate that phenomenon. Sheriff's deputies went there in response to a complaint about safety by the administrator of the elementary school, which was in session as the men played.

Mr. Smith, the Putnam sheriff, said deputies arrested the men that day only after they refused the school administrator's request for them to leave. They were charged with criminal trespass, a class B misdemeanor, and a Brewster village judge set bail at $1,000 for seven of the eight. Bail for the eighth man, Juan Jimeniz, a roofer, was set at $3,000 because he was not able to provide his home address.

Mr. Smith said federal immigration agents were called to the jail because deputies suspected the men were illegal immigrants and 'because we are trying to uphold the law for the citizens of this county.'

When they arrived, seven of the men had made bail and Mr. Jimeniz, who was not able to pay his bail, was taken by the immigration agents to a federal detention wing of the Pike County Jail in Hawley, Pa., where he has remained since, fighting deportation.
'He has no criminal record,' said Vanessa Merton, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Pace University Law School, which represents Mr. Jimeniz. 'He is a roofer. He is supporting five children.'

'There is no way you could describe his detention as anything but haphazard, random and completely arbitrary,' she said."

We are each of us involved in this system that uses cheaper labor to keep the prices of some goods and services in line with an affordable American way of life. We've got to kick the habit, not the worker.