Yesterday, in my article “Our Immigration Police State,” I wrote about aspects of the immigration police state that comes with America’s socialist system of immigration controls. These police-state measures include warrantless searches of farms and ranches within 100 miles of the border and the criminalization of American citizens who hire, transport, or harbor illegal immigrants.
It is this aspect of America’s socialist system of immigration controls that proponents of this system are loathe to address, much less acknowledge. This is especially true of right-wingers, who wax eloquent about their favorite mantra — “free enterprise, private property, and limited government”— but block out of their minds that they are among the world’s premier proponents of an immigration police state.
Another aspect of America’s immigration police state are the highway immigration checkpoints, which are another hallmark of totalitarian regimes. I know this from personal experience. Many years ago, I traveled to Cuba. I took a cab from Havana to a small town called Trinidad. When I got there, I realized that I had forgotten to take my passport. In Cuba, you have to carry your papers with you while traveling within the country. A woman in Trinidad told me that there was no way I was going to make it back to Havana because the state had highway checkpoints where officials inspected people’s papers. She said that I would end up in a Cuban jail. (I decided to fly back to Havana and, fortunately, the ticket agent failed to ask for my papers.)
It’s no different under America’s immigration police state. People on the border are required to carry their papers with them while traveling, just like in communist Cuba.
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No, let me correct that. Not everyone. If you’re a White Anglo, you’re okay without your papers. But if you’re a dark-skinned American of Mexican descent, you had better be carrying your papers when you encounter these highway checkpoints or you’re toast, just like in Cuba.
Some years ago, I was flying out of my hometown of Laredo. The guy sitting next to me was a dark-skinned Mexican-American who had grown up in Laredo and was now living in Dallas. He told me that he always carried his passport with him when returning to Laredo. He also said that he always dressed up when flying out of Laredo to avoid being mistaken for an illegal immigrant.
That’s pathetic. But that the type of thing that comes with America’s system of immigration controls.
I would estimate that 20-25 percent of the people of Laredo cannot speak English. At least that was the case when I lived there. I guarantee you: Those Americans had better be carrying their papers with them if they decide to drive to San Antonio or fly to Dallas. If they don’t, they will be taken into custody and forcibly returned to Laredo for processing.
I also know this from personal experience. We had a nanny who lived with us growing up. Her parents had been illegal immigrants who had come to the United States to make some money to help them survive. She had been born here in the United States and, therefore, was an American citizen. To the day she died in her early 90s, she never learned to speak English. When she would take the bus or the plane to visit my siblings in San Antonio or Dallas, she would make certain that she didn’t forget her passport because the Border Patrol/Immigration Service would never let her proceed on her trip without her papers.
When a person drives northward from Laredo to San Antonio on IH35, he encounters a surreal site as he reaches the crest of a small hill. Up ahead is a big immigration inspection station. The immediate reaction is: Am I in Mexico approaching the U.S.-Mexico border?
At that inspection station, you are forced to stop and answer questions posed to you by the immigration gendarmes. If you refuse to roll down your window and answer their questions, they will bash in your window, drag you from your car, and charge you with a federal criminal offense. Sometimes, they will force you to open your trunk so that they can search it without a warrant. They might also bring dogs around to smell your vehicle for drugs.
Now, mind you: This happens to American citizens who have never entered Mexico. It’s what life is like in the immigration police state along the border.
These highway checkpoints are not only on highways leading north away from the border. They also have them on highways that run east-west along the border. So, Americans, once again who never enter Mexico and are simply traveling east to west or vice versa, are required to stop at these checkpoints and be subjected to interrogation and search. In fact, this is how the immigration gendarmes caught country singer Willie Nelson with marijuana some years ago — without a search warrant of course.
This is the immigration police state that comes with America’s socialist system of immigration controls. But American right-wingers simply keep singing to themselves, “I’m proud to be an American because at least I know I’m free.”