October 9, 2007 1:38 PM
It sounds like something out of a bad Western, but truth is sometimes stranger (and harder to swallow) than fiction: last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with automatic weapons, shotguns, and reportedly cowboy hats conducted a series of late-night and early-morning raids in Nassau and Suffolk counties, allegedly targeting illegal alien gang members but which (no surprise) resulted mostly in the arrest of peaceful, undocumented immigrants.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Mulvey was angry enough at what he described as the "cowboy" mentality of the federal agents "running roughshod over local police officers [and] at times pointing their weapons at cops" that he announced his department would not participate or cooperate with any more ICE investigations until some serious changes have been made in their tactics.
According to this New York Times article, the ICE agents refused to share the list of targets with local police until four days after the raids had begun, and had no interest in checking their list of 96 "deportable gang associates" against a daily-updated local police database, which resulted in Federal officers busting down a lot of wrong doors.
What Federal immigration agents found instead of their alleged targets were a lot of scared people, many of them US citizens and legal residents, woken up in the middle of the night by gun-wielding vigilantes.
Backing up Commissioner Mulvey, Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi is calling for an investigation by the higher-ups at Homeland Security into what he described as "serious allegations of misconduct and malfeasance committed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel" in the raids.
Interestingly, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer (who works under staunchly anti-immigration Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy) had nothing but nice things to say about the Federal agents breaking into people's homes under his jurisdiction in search of alleged gang members who do not or have never lived there. And the Federal agency itself denies any misdeeds, chalking Commissioner Mulvey's concerns up to a "misunderstanding."
I'm not sure what there is to misunderstand about illegal government searches on private homes, but maybe that's just me and the Nassau police force.
When all was said and done, 186 people were arrested (92 in Nassau and 65 in Suffolk) with the Feds claiming that 28 total gang members or associates were among those taken into custody. No matter how you slice it (and Nassau county officials deny that 28 is even a fair number, with actual gang members accounting for only a handful of those arrested), 28 dangerous persons out of 186 total arrests is a pretty clear indication of indiscriminate targeting of immigrant communities.
Law enforcement depends on the trust and goodwill of the communities they police and protect, and poorly targeted late-night raids do a lot to dissuade residents that the cops are looking out for their best interests. My (cowboy?) hat is off to Commissioner Mulvey and County Executive Suozzi for refusing to participate further in terrorizing Long Island residents.
I agree that we have to start a possitive campaigne towards our friends from different countries that have not been able to become legal in this country. I am an inmigrant from Colombia,I came 8 years ago with a B-visa and I applied for asylum in 2000.I am getting my bachelors in Human services at St Joseph's college in Patchgoge and I will continue pursuing higher education for my well being and all my friends the immigrants.
By wilson October 9, 2007 07:05 PM