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You just cannot make this crap up:

Maybe you should put some blame on the parents? They knowingly engaged in criminal activity that they could be arrested and deported for at any time. They apparently didn’t care enough to think about what effect that would have on their children. In true liberal fashion, however, you expect the government to care more about children than their parents do.

And if they had done as you asked, no doubt you would be complaining about “THE GOVERNMENT SEIZING CHILDREN JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!”

Let's take a moment to discuss selective legal enforcement and following proper procedures in law enforcement, shall we?

(1) Almost every state in the country has laws which specify requirements for the care of children who are caught up in legal enforcement situations wherein their parents are picked up on charges or in other legal enforcement situations (such as picked up and held indefinitely as a "material witness" say in a terrorism case by the Feds, wherein there is no other available adult supervision for the children, just as one example of many, many others).  These laws — which are on the books and written specifically because the legislatures, the governors, the communities and the legal systems all agree are necessary — are put into place specifically because children are innocents who are not IN ANY WAY responsible for the actions of the adults around them — and ought to be guarded from harm.

In most states, the children's care and concern for their welfare is to be the TOP PRIORITY in the legal enforcement action.  This is because — and any person who has dipped their toe into law enforcement, as a cop, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, whatever will tell you this — if the children are not properly cared for, they end up in the juvenile system and then on the rolls as adult criminals more often than not.  Which leads to more expense for the government, more criminal activity in the community, and more long-term problems for everyone.

That wingnuts ignore this is idiocy.  But there you are.  Any person in law enforcement can tell you that intervention early in a child's life saves both money and manpower down the road — but it has to be done properly, with care and concern for the child, follow-up and a lot of oversight.

(2)  The company involved in these raids — Swift — had multiple facilities in several states raided simultaneously.  Is it just me, or does that say "pattern of illegal hiring practices of end-running immigration laws and skirting other legal enforcement issues in order to secure higher profits by paying very low wages to low-information workers"? 

Has the company been charged with legal wrongdoing or any criminal charges whatsoever?  Nope.  Does this raise the ire of our wingnut friend?  Nope.  Hypocrisy much?  Yep.

(3)  Also, the DHS raided only the morning shift at these plants.  Did they think the afternoon and evening shifts were filled with legal immigrant workers getting great salaries and benefits and having all their proper papers in order and such?  OR did they think the daytime raids would make the news, that we'd all somehow miss the failure to enforce the same laws across the board for the afternoon and evening shifts…and that all of the various meatpacking plants could continue to exploit these low-wage, low-information workers who would keep right on working at these plants THAT ARE STILL OPERATING — and no doubt working on some new means to import illegal immigrant workers from Guatamala because, other than having a single shift distrupted, they have paid NO PENALTY WHATSOEVER.

And this is appropriate, selective legal enforcement because…?  Word of advice to wingnut trollery — take your head out of your behind and realize that this raid was a showboat moment, which did not properly afford these people due process of law and, in several documented cases now, scooped up legal residents of the US.  The Constitution is not some flimsy paper toy.  People's lives and the lives of their children are not simply numbers that you crunch, or things that you parade in front of news cameras in handcuffs.

There are consequences and repercussions to these decisions that reach across entire family's lives.  I know this — I have made decisions that have led to lifetime incarceration for criminal defendants and I do not think that any person should make those decisions lightly or without thought being given to the lives of the families involved on all sides of the issues involved.

And that is just a tiny sliver of the issues involved in all of this — but of course, it's easier to just blame "the brown people" for all of our nation's woes, now isn't it?  Because then, no one has to question the Great and Powerful Limbaugh and his cheetoes eating toadies.

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