March 14, 2007

Deval Patrick knew about New Bedford immigration raid in February ("humanitarian crisis")

After the New Bedford immigration raid, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick ranted against the Feds, claiming that they had caused a "humanitarian crisis" due to the children of illegal aliens involved. In fact, this has become a stock talking point of the usual supporters of illegal immigration, with John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, William Delahunt, and Barney Frank supporting "grieving" illegal aliens.

Now, a different picture is emerging. Namely, the Patrick administration had months of foreknowledge of the raids and seemingly every chance in the world to try to prevent the "crisis" From this:

"We had an open and frequent exchange of information to make sure that (the state Department of Social Services) were getting information on child-care issues," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Marc Raimondi. "We're going above and beyond the role of a law-enforcement agency to address humanitarian concerns."

Mr. Raimondi said ICE met with state officials regarding the raid as early as August 2006, and met with Deval Patrick's administration in late December as well as Harry Spence, director of the DSS.

...He said ICE officials made every effort to determine if those illegal immigrants arrested were the sole caregivers for children. Of the 361 people arrested at the scene March 6, 60 were released within 24 hours, he said. Since then, at the urging of DSS, ICE has released 20 Salvadorean immigrants being held in Massachusetts jails and 10 people of various nationalities being held in Texas...

...Mr. Raimondi said some immigrants arrested at the factory were not telling the truth about their children, making it difficult to assess their situation after the raid...

This has caused even Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara to turn (via this) on Deval Patrick:

...Patrick himself was told in February [about] the raid...

...As late as yesterday afternoon Nancy Fernandez Mills, communications director for the Patrick administration, was insisting that "the governor was not told and did not know the raid was happening until it was going on" and that "DSS did not know about this raid until it was in progress."

Told that, in fact, members of Patrick's Cabinet had briefed him about the operation weeks ago and that Spence had participated in a conference call with ICE the day before the raid -- a fact the commissioner himself acknowledged in yesterday's newspapers -- she reconsidered: "I'd like to retract that statement until I talk to someone who actually knows something about this timeline."

It is going to be a long four years.

Their handling of this is strangely similar to Tom Vilsack possibly misleading about the Swift raid in Iowa. Wouldn't it just be easier on corrupt Democrats like Patrick and Vilsack if they decided to tell the truth and support our laws from the start?

Posted to Immigration2007a at March 14, 2007 10:43 PM