Pictures of crying children whose mothers are being....

Joe Daues of KSPR News reported here:

Currently the government is launching a quiet war against illegal immigrants, and it’s becoming increasingly visible and more intense by the day.

"I think we're talking about something the American people have never seen before," said Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff.

Across the country, federal agents have been raiding businesses and homes in an unprecedented campaign targeting illegal immigrants." I think we've gotta show the public that we are serious about enforcing the laws," Chertoff said.

In just the last month, federal agents conducted work-site raids in seven U.S. cities, arresting nearly 200 undocumented workers. They rounded up almost 2,400 illegal immigrants who were previously ordered deported.

In the last week, 1,300 illegal immigrants were arrested in California, in one of the biggest sweeps in recent memory.
More that 50 workers at McDonalds restaurants were recently arrested in Nevada. That sparked protests in a frightened and frustrated immigrant community.*

But back on July 1 of this year, in an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday, shortly after the comprehensive immigration reform bill failed to pass, Chertoff said:

"...there's one thing we haven't been able to do. We haven't been able to require every employer to enter a system in which they check the work status of their employees and determine whether they're legal.

And without that, we don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective. And that would be the single greatest additional weapon we could use if we're serious about tackling this problem."*

Wallace pointed out that what came out of the debate on immigration reform was the recognition that the American people do not trust our government when it comes to enforcing the laws on illegal immigration. He asked Chertoff:

"...why not take the lesson from this failure and go for enforcement first, resubmit the president's agreement to spend $4.4 billion on new enforcement?

You say you don't have some tools when it comes to employer verification. Why not resubmit all of those and challenge the Democrats on enforcement first?"

Chertoff then tries to go into a rant but is cut off when he pulls the...:

"700 criminal cases against employers, raids involving thousands of people, unfortunate pictures of crying children. ..." "... whose mothers are being..."

...sympathy card.

Wallace finally pins him down to answering his original question. The rest of the exchange:

WALLACE:I don't mean to interrupt you. I mean, are you going to submit the $4.4 billion? Are you going to resubmit the tamper- proof card? Are you going to resubmit the employer verification or not?

CHERTOFF: I think we're going to say to the members of Congress who think they have a better way that they should produce legislation and pass legislation, which they have not done for the past two years.

They've tried enforcement only. That didn't pass. We've tried comprehensive. That stalled. I think it's now time for Congress, which has the power to legislate, to make a determination about how it wants to help us solve this problem.

WALLACE: But the government, the president, is not going to submit his own plan.

CHERTOFF: Well, we've submitted a budget. We submitted a comprehensive immigration plan. We agreed on $4.4 billion which was going to be secured by the payments made by the illegals so it would not bust the budget.

In the absence of that plan, I think now those who have a better way ought to come forward with that better way. We're still going to work on our part to enforce the border using the tools that we have.

I predicted in Something ventured, nothing gained: Status quo returns to Washington, that our representatives will return to status quo. Nothing substantial will be done to enforce our laws because the carrot that was being held out in the form of comprehensive immigration reform has been put back in the bushel basket and there's no longer any need to prove to the American people that the federal government takes it job to secure our borders seriously. I wrote:

To those representatives:

Don't blame the opponents of the bill, do your job of securing our borders and then come back to us in a couple of years. The "ball's" still in your court and the "carrot" can be replaced but not unless you prove you are willing to do your job and do it consistently and do it long term.

Sometime, since late June, early July, Chertoff has had a change of heart from claiming not to "really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work" to doing something about illegal immigrant workers, remember, he told Chris Wallace:

"...We haven't been able to require every employer to enter a system in which they check the work status of their employees and determine whether they're legal.

And without that, we don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective."*

Does this mean his ability to do so was always there but he simply didn't want to take action on enforcing the law?

July 1, I wrote, nothing much was being done to enforce our immigration laws until the proponents wanted to pass this comprehesive immigration reform bill. Wasn't it convenient that, all of a sudden, when there was the hope of passing this legislation, that there were numerous ICE raids of businesses employing illegal aliens across the country, that there was all this "tough" talk about securing our borders, that there was all this talk about pouring billions of dollars into homeland security coffers to take care of the illegal immigrant problem?

With the recent "Dream Act" proposal, now we're seeing another step up in ICE raids of businesses employing illegal aliens across the country. More convenience? My suspicious nature makes me wonder about whether these raids are undertaken in the hopes it will stir up further sympathy via:

"pictures of crying children. ..." "... whose mothers are being..."

Remember, Joe Daues, KSPR News :

"In the last week, 1,300 illegal immigrants were arrested in California, in one of the biggest sweeps in recent memory. More that 50 workers at McDonalds restaurants were recently arrested in Nevada. That sparked protests in a frightened and frustrated immigrant community.*

He continued:

"They're not criminals. They want to work. We want to do things right for them and for this country," said one protester. But some are criminals. For the first time since a May 22nd raid in the Ozarks,immigration officers are accounting for more than 100 suspected illegal aliens rounded up from George's Poultry plant in Butterfield, MO."*

October 7, Immigrants' dream nightmare for critics -- chicagotribune.com:

"...Rosa, 17, a soft-spoken honors student, worries every day about something the typical American teenager never has to think about: being deported because she is an undocumented immigrant."

Some days I feel overwhelmed by it—just hopeless," said the young woman who came to Chicago with her parents at age 7. "But other days I have a lot of hope that things will be OK, that everything will work out somehow."

Under new and controversial legislation championed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Rosa's dreams—graduating near the top of her class and attending college—could change her status as an illegal immigrant....

...the Dream Act, or Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, the legislation would provide hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship if they were brought to the U.S. as children, are younger than 30, have graduated from a U.S. high school and either enroll in college or enlist in the military.

"This bill means a lot to me," Durbin said recently. "But it means even more to a lot of young people across this country."

Yet the Dream Act, which Democrats have vowed to bring to a full Senate vote in November, faces an uphill fight. It was withdrawn last month as an amendment to a defense bill in the wake of intense public criticism. It has even raised the ire of traditionally pro-immigration groups that view the military-service component of the bill as a means of strong-arming desperate young men and women into uniform at a risky time of war. And it has infuriated anti-amnesty groups that say it has no safeguards against fraud, rewards those who have broken the law and does nothing to address future immigration enforcement."*

Oh, for the love of "...unfortunate pictures of crying children."

No doubt some will think I'm heartless because I seem to show no sympathy for young Rosa or young crying children, but we either enforce our laws or we don't and my main point is that there seems to be a pattern here. When legislators want to pass immigration bills that offer amnesty to illegal immigrants there is a step up in enforcement of law. When there is a step up in law enforcement the stories of crying children being torn away from their parents comes into play and, like I said, my suspicious mind wanders and wonders about that convenient pattern that always emerges when there is an amnesty bill offered. Politics and emotional blackmail have a consistent tendency of rearing their heads. Rosa's situation is a sad one, but is rewarding criminal activity the remedy to the problem?

*All emphasis mine