TheAgitator.com
Immigrant Justice
Saturday, April 17th, 2004A 50 year old housewife, mother of four, and twenty-year resident of Virginia is in jail, and will likely be deported. For what? “Embezzling” $70, a crime for which she has paid $3,000 in restitution and served a year of probation. Unfortnately, Mi-Choong O’Brien isn’t an American citizen, and she commited her crime in an age of anti-immigrant, anti-terrorism fervor.
On Jan. 8 she told her husband, home on leave, that she was going to the store. Instead, she met her probation officer in Fairfax.That is when the United States immigration system swallowed her life.
The probation meeting was a setup. O’Brien, petite and refined, walked into a room of armed federal agents and local police. They pushed her against the wall, handcuffed and manacled her.
She barely had time to call her stunned husband with the long-hidden truth before she was hustled into a van, still manacled and with no seat belt, for a jolting ride to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth.
O’Brien is still there three months later, awaiting possible deportation to a country she no longer knows and far away from the family she has raised in America.
“I have to go back to a country with no family to support me,” she said recently, quietly sobbing during an interview at the jail. “I have no job opportunities. I have no house, no money. It is like a death penalty for me.”
…Since 1996, people with misdemeanor convictions and nonviolent felonies, such as Mi-Choong O’Brien, have been branded as “aggravated felons.” The law does not allow immigration judges to weigh the good against the bad in deciding whether to deport people living legally in this country, sometimes since infancy.
Longtime residents can be jailed and deported for crimes they committed long ago, even decades before Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996 and changed the rules.
Misdemeanors under the laws of Virginia can be aggravated felonies under the law of immigration. A person sentenced to a year in jail is considered a felon - even if the time is suspended, even if the sentence ultimately is dismissed after its terms are met.
Detention is mandatory. No bond. The immigrant has a right to a lawyer, but the government does not have to provide one.
Many of the detainees held on relatively minor crimes would be free if they were American citizens. But they aren’t citizens and don’t have the same rights as Americans.
The law is bad enough, critics say, but the government’s rigid enforcement since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has made it worse. Immigration officials often won’t use the discretion they have under the law.
Mi-Choong’s brother in-law actually wrote me a couple of months ago to ask that I write about her. I couldn’t. I’m a freelancer, and couldn’t give the story the attention it needs. He was pretty angry with me. Glad he found a full-time journalist to run with it.
Agitator.com villain and anti-immigrant crusader Mark Krikorian looks particularly heartless in this piece. Guess in some conservative circles, anti-immigration sentiment trumps family values.
Follow-up here.
Since this lady is a legal immigrant, she should not be subject to this kind of unchecked/unbalanced jurisprudence.
This is NOT the kind of “immigration reform” I was talking about the other day.
I have no problems with people playing by the rules and coming here — I work for an immigrant from India who became one of the best CEOs in the semiconductor business.
However, those rules are there for good reasons — not only to regulate the inflow of new people to manageable levels, but to (supposedly) assure that they understand and absorb how this nation works, so that they know how they … and we … can continue to successfully “pursue happiness”.
If this lady had been an illegal, she shouldn’t have been allowed to stay here 20 years … yet that happens too.
What a fouled-up mess … both ways … and neither side of the political aisle has the cajones to clean it up. I wonder … if Kerry was to propose real measures to curb illegal immigration (in contrast to that smoke screen of a tax plan he has proposed), would Bush actually get tougher on the illegals?
How does Radley expect anyone to take him seriously when he sounds like an AILA spokesman?
This is not “an age of anti-immigrant, anti-terrorism fervor.” This is an age where the president and his opponent can come out in favor of illegal aliens. This is an age when racial separatists are elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and hold high level positions in state governments. If there’s fervor, it’s because our elected representatives refuse to do what we want. And, it’s not directed at the immigrants as Radley smears, it’s directed at the representatives and the system who fail to enforce our laws. As just one small example, in Texas 86% of people polled thought that illegal immigration was a serious or very serious problem. Yet, politicians - at least those currently in power - do the opposite of what the people want.
Krikorian stated facts. And, I would imagine he was not informed of this particular case or if he commented on this particular case that quote was not included.
As for the article itself, consider this paragraph:
O’Brien is still there three months later, awaiting possible deportation to a country she no longer knows and far away from the family she has raised in America.
Now, consider this paragraph from a recent AP story about a California woman in a slightly similar position:
Now she faces another ordeal - the prospect of being torn from her family and sent back to a country she no longer knows…
Pretty similar, eh? It’s almost as if the AILA or the NIF is writing these things for these people.
I discuss AP’s bias regarding the second article here. It doesn’t go into the woman’s case so much as AP’s treatment of it and their treatment of a story that will have a far greater impact on a far greater number of people: Mexico and Central-American countries forming a pact to help their citizens evade our laws and to help the elites of those countries obtain more power here.
It must be sob story season
Yesterday I covered the AP story of the Mexican legal immigrant who faces deportation because she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. I didn’t discuss the case itself so
I guess I’m heartless too, but I’m wondering how someone can live here for twenty years without ever bothering to become a citizen or a dual citizenship.
When she chooses to declare legally that she is not an American, but a South Korean, why exactly should we be shocked that the legal system complies with her wishes and treats her as a South Korean?
I’m also rather dismayed by Radley’s dismissing the crime because she “only” embezzled $70 dollars. I don’t care if she only embezzled two cents; theft is theft.
So, what do you think is fair punishment for stealing $70? $3000 restitution? One month in jail? Exile from your family?
Obviously this was handled wrong, but I’m in the ’she shouldn’t have been here illegally for that long in the first place’ camp. I still say you have to live in the southwest to really appreciate the problem. It’s not “they’re stealing our jobs” that makes me upset. It’s the fact they are coming here illegally and unchecked. Come here legally and you can work all you want as far as I’m concerned.
I pointed out in a past post that here in AZ alone, 43% of crime is committed by illegal immigrants. Forget the jobs, what about the criminals or terrorists coming here? It’s so easy to come here, who knows who is here? How can we even begin to complain about Al Qaeda cells in America if millions of people are allowed to sneak in every year?
Another point people don’t think about: People have died for the right to be Americans or to protect American lives. It’s like spitting on their graves to just allow non-citizens to come here and benefit from our country without even attempting to become citizens.
I’m not for kicking out legal immigrants. Only illegal ones, but that said, embezzling money under the circumstances was moronic. But being a moron isn’t grounds for deportation.
This is a load of crap. This lady get’s the gestapo treatment for ripping off $70 while I can’t get my child molesting step son deported? What the hell kind of B.S. is this? Living in SoCal I’m all too familiar with the problems posed by illegal aliens. I live with it every day. I don’t think the way this lady was treated, or that she is even being deported, is right. I agree that getting American citizenship is important if someone want’s to stay here. I can also tell you that the experience we had when my wife tried to get her citizenship was nothing short of outrageous. The “lady” that did the interview with her made her so nervous she just forgot everything. I raised hell with the INS folks for three days after that and I’m telling you in our case it just isn’t worth the trouble. We’ll probably try again this year, but if I see the “lady” when we go back their I’m going to jail for assault. I don’t let my wife’s mother get away with treating her like that, I’ll be damned if I’ll let some insubordinate federal bureaucrat get away with it.
Bravo, Nick.
Living in the southwest myself, I do see the problems caused by illegals. Working in an academic research institution, I also see what a colossal pain in the ass it is for talented, hard-working people to attempt to come and live here lawfully.
The fact of the matter is, immigration spends most of its time placing hurdles in front of people who are playing by the rules so that they appear to be “doing something”…in the meantime, those that are willing to do so stream across the border unchecked by the hundreds mere miles from where I live.
I know Canadians that have had trouble re-entering the country after visiting family.
I know a woman who had to go back to Germany b/c she couldn’t get a work permit for the time her husband is studying in the US.
I know an Asian woman who has lived in the States her entire life who was once hauled out of her lab in handcuffs…because her parents had used a fake SS# over 20 years ago.
And yet, I see different Mexicans working in the cafeteria almost weekly, and very few of them speak any English. But I’m sure all their paperwork is in order. Right.
I can relate Brian … I work with a few Canadians who have to jump through hoops every year and one guy whose wife can’t work work ‘because her job isn’t important enough’ yet down the street from her are 50 houses having their yardwork done by illegal immigrants.
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