Posted on 07/25/2006 6:12:13 PM PDT by dennisw
The passengers -- 105 men shackled at the wrists and the ankles--grumbled their assent. Then they peered out the thick, blurry windows for a last glimpse of Virginia. Once, they had been hopeful newcomers to the United States. Now, they were about to leave for good on a deportation flight.
Jose de Jesus Galea, 37, stared morosely out his window, unmoved. The burly Salvadoran pet store owner had called Virginia home for 21 years. It seemed incredible, he said later, that he would never again see the flat, forested landscape that was receding rapidly from view.
Just as strange was the thought that he would soon be back in a country he last saw when he was 17. The year was 1985, El Salvador was in the throes of civil war, and Galea had just been discharged from one of the army's most ruthless battalions. Pressed into service when he was 14, Galea said he was taught to torture the unit's captives by pushing needles under their fingernails. He had buried innocent civilians alive, and he was haunted by guilty flashbacks of their screams. Now he was being deported back because of a drunken assault.
Those who are deported often come to the attention of immigration officials only because they commit a crime. Authorities in the Washington area often wait until they have a critical mass of deportees, then charter a plane to fly them to a detention facility near the U.S. border for final transport to their home countries.
Watching over them were 16 marshals, who had reason to be wary. About 45 percent of the deportees had been convicted of violent crimes. Others had committed offenses as minor as public drunkenness. Although most were Salvadorans, there were natives of the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica and Honduras.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
ping
It's not good enough for a lot of people...
Besides, those things you mentioned are part of the job...
We pay him 400,000 a year to do his job...
"Another liberal political ploy destroys to dreams of hardworking folks."
Apparently you missed the fact that this guy is a criminal.
Cry me a river! Wouldn't it be cheaper just to shoot them? Getting a flight back home is more than magnanimous.
Do you honestly think that Mexico would send even one peso?
Awwww. Sniff sniff.
We all know that the border is a joke, and it will remain so as long as we have a Republican congress whose contributors need workers that they can pay less than US citizens and legal immigrants.
Just because a Democratic president would be worse than useless does not mean that Bush isn't useless on border issues.
Here's a question:
After an illegal alien sneaks in a couple of dozen times and is deported, will he or she be able to save up their Frequent Flyer miles to upgrade to First Class?
The handcuffs would be real leather, lined in fur.
Actually not all in this article are illegals...some have permanent resiidence visas, or asylum status...but if you committ a crime you can also be deported home, which may mean nothing more than the country in which you hold a passport. This is nothing new, and people have been harping about it for years. It is particularly hard for young adults who grow up in America, no longer speak their native language and break the law and are sent home. Alot of these people could have applied for citizenship, but failed to do so...which would have saved them from deportation.
What really gripes me is that many manufacturers have passed up more expensive (in the short term) automation, because of all this cheap labor.
We would all be much further ahead without one illegal!
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