Operation Streamline: Massive and Unjust Criminalization of Immigrants
March 10, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Every Monday through Friday, at 1:30 p.m., a Federal Court House in Tucson, Arizona is filled with groups of men and women chained around their ankles and wrists. They are paraded, in groups of seven, before a federal magistrate. They are all from Mexico or Central America. Every one of them is charged with one of two federal crimes—illegal entry into the U.S., a misdemeanor with a sentence that ranges from 30 days to 6 months in a federal prison, county jail, or private prison; or illegal re-entry, which carries a potential sentence of 2 years in prison, or up to 20 years if the person has a prior conviction for an aggravated felony.
Imperialist Justice and Mass Criminalization
By the end of the afternoon about 70 people will have faced the judge, been convicted, and sentenced. Each of them will have had about 25 seconds to hear the charges read against them, enter a plea, and receive a sentence. One of the judges who oversees this assembly line process of imperialist "justice" boasted to a reporter, "my record is 30 minutes." The judge continued, "What we do is constitutional, it satisfies due process. It may not look good, but it does everything the law requires."
In half an hour or so, the lives, hopes, and dreams of 70 desperate, impoverished people seeking work are crushed by the constitutional procedures of a capitalist-imperialist system built on brutal exploitation of people worldwide.
Similar scenes play out daily in El Paso, Del Rio, Laredo, McAllen, and Brownsville, Texas, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and in Yuma, Arizona. This is "Operation Streamline"—a program begun in the administration of George W. Bush and greatly expanded in the Obama years. People caught by the Border Patrol as they struggle to cross deserts, prairies, mountains, and canyons in searing heat and freezing cold are shackled, packed in buses, and brought to holding cells immediately. Many have been travelling for weeks from Mexico's interior before they are hunted down as they try to make the final leg of their trip over la frontera to El Norte. They never are allowed to shower, or change into clean clothes. Often they aren't fed. The next day they are brought before a judge to have their day—actually half a minute—in court.
In 2011 alone, about 62,000 immigrants were convicted as criminals under Operation Streamline. The mass criminalization of immigrants is a key component in the immigration policy of a criminal system.
Fabiana Ramos told a reporter how she and others were told to behave and respond in the Tucson courthouse. All she had to do was acknowledge her name, answer yes to any question she was asked, and simply utter "culpable"—guilty—when the charge was read. She said the lawyers who advised her and others "are just going to tell you what you have to say, what's in your best interest to say. It was in my interest to say I was guilty, and that I accepted the time they gave me. And that's it. That's all they tell me. It was about 10 minutes, more or less." According to U.S. government statistics, 97 percent of those arrested plead guilty.
Cruel "Consequence Delivery"
Michael J. Fisher, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, reported to Congress in October 2011 that Operation Streamline and other measures are part of the Obama administration's "whole-of-government approach" to the U.S.'s repressive assault upon its southwestern border with Mexico. In the context of what Fisher described as the "historic levels of personnel, technology, and resources" the Department of Homeland Security has deployed to the border, he described the crafting of a "consequence delivery system" intended to impose swift and harsh punishments on immigrants arrested trying to cross the border.
Operation Streamline is a key component of this project; it is a specific application of "zero tolerance" that targets people arrested crossing the border. It requires criminal prosecution of most immigrants caught in the districts where it is underway. This contrasts with previous and long-standing U.S. policy of putting most people ensnared by the Border Patrol into civil proceedings, and allowing many to leave the U.S. voluntarily. As the New York Times wrote, Operation Streamline is "the core of a federal program that operates in three border states, using prosecution and imprisonment as a front-line deterrent to people who try to cross the border illegally. It is part of a broader strategy of increasing the consequences for people who break immigration laws." In other words, first Bush and now Obama have criminalized immigration, to an unprecedented extent.
Streamline is one of nine interlocking federal measures initiated or strengthened by the Obama administration intended to "establish clear priorities... that enhance border security," according to Fisher. They include such measures as the "Alien Transfer Exit Program" which deports people through a border crossing far removed from where they were arrested, and the "Mexican Interior Repatriation Program," which sends Mexican people to cities deep into the Mexican interior rather than across the border, regardless of where they are originally from.
Federal felony convictions for "immigration-related crimes" have skyrocketed in recent years. A government report in 2011 reported that while the number of people arrested by federal authorities on immigration charges actually declined in the previous decade, the number of people prosecuted more than tripled. By September 2013, prosecution of immigration-related charges represented over 60 percent of all federal convictions that year. By fiscal year 2013, prosecutions of immigrants in federal court were at an all-time high of almost 100,000 people—a rise of 367 percent in 10 years.
Sharp Conflict, Revolutionary Potential
Intense and acrimonious debate over forging a new immigration law has been coursing through Washington for the past year. As Revolution wrote then, this proposed law has “nothing at all to do with reforming an oppressive situation to benefit the people. It has everything to do with even further ramping up the brutal militarization of the U.S./Mexico border and instituting highly repressive attacks on and registration of millions of immigrants in this country, in order to better control and exploit a segment of the population that the ruling class of this capitalist-imperialist system both needs and fears—all under the guise of extending a ‘path to citizenship.’” (“Proposed New Immigration Law: An Ominous Leap in Repression and the Need for Resistance”)
Democrats and Republicans both agree on the need for greatly intensified and expanded ability to control and repress immigrants. They continue to have disagreements, often sharp and intense disagreements, over how to accomplish this. At this point it is not clear what resolution, if any, will be reached among them this year, and Revolution will have fuller analysis of that process in a coming issue.
But some things are important to note now. One is that an overall immigration bill passed in the U.S. Senate last year contained, among many other highly repressive measures, a tripling in the funding for Operation Streamline. And this bill was attacked by Republicans who accused Obama and the Democrats as being "too soft," and in particular not providing sufficient means to turn an already militarized border into even more of a death zone.
Another is that the both the compulsion to reforge immigration/border policy, and the difficulty the rulers are having in reaching some form of agreement and achieving that goal, are expressions of the depth and volatility of the contradictions around immigration, and the U.S.'s relation with Mexico, that confront this system of exploitation and oppression. Immigrants within the U.S. are a highly exploited section of the people whose continued exploitation is essential to the functioning of a system built on profit wrenched from the labor of millions. U.S. domination of Mexico and the Central American countries is a linchpin of its global empire. Containing potential upheaval in those countries, which would have immediate, direct, and unpredictable reverberations within the U.S., is a great strategic concern for the imperialists.
Finally, and most importantly for those building the movement for revolution, the millions of immigrants, with and without proper papers, are a tremendous potential source of revolutionary strength in this country. Resistance to Operation Streamline that has begun to percolate in Arizona and other locations, and resistance to all the attacks on immigrants, needs to increasingly be built as part of building the movement for revolution, with the orientation of "fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution."
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