Nicole Gaouette/LAT: leftwing groups on the "lookout for immigration raids"

Criminal enterprises that have fixed locations usually employ lookouts in the neighborhood where they operate who warn them of impending police raids and they frequently pay off local officials or cops. There's (perhaps) only one form of illegal activity for which the Los Angeles Times would consider that acceptable: illegal immigration, of course.

Thus it is that Nicole Gaouette of the Los Angeles Times offers "On the lookout for immigration raids" (link) about various leftwing groups that organize phone trees and collect intelligence from those in small towns regarding possible Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. For "balance" (LAT-style), she includes four paragraphs relating to those who don't support these efforts, starting at the twelfth paragraph. The rest of the two-pager comes close to a how-to guide.

She also fails to go into the social fabric-related aspects of this issue. Is it healthy for our society to have millions of people - led by a small number of "community organizers" - who don't think our laws apply to them? Doesn't the embedding of support for illegal activity in one subsector of our population have a huge social cost? Shouldn't newspapers do exposes on those involved in these attempts rather than acting as a sympathetic ear? Apparently to the LAT all that matters is that there's profits to be made.

Gaouette also says that Leos from MIRA said that one of their tips came from "spouse of a local official"; whether that's true or not isn't known, but assuming it is, isn't that a potential example of public corruption? Shouldn't the LAT look into that? What if, for instance, the spouse of an FBI agent tipped off the bad guys to a drug raid? Would that be enough to make the LAT concerned, or would they turn out to be corrupt in that case as well?

Should the LAT want to stop advocating for illegal activity and start doing some real reporting, they could look into one of their quote sources: Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. She could, for instance, point out that their president is linked to the Mexican government, and she could look into their links to local officials, their lawsuit which would have supported Western Union, and so on.

Others quoted:
* Julien Ross, director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
* Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants' Rights Alliance
* Socorro Leos, a community organizer from that group
* Sandra Sanchez, "an immigrants' rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization." (also has an indirect link to the Mexican government)
* Diego Bonesatti, "a community organizer in Melrose Park, Ill."

Immigration2008a · Sun, 09/14/2008 - 13:23 · Importance: 1