As a long time writer for a blog on immigration and immigrant issues, I've built a high level of skepticism when I hear calls for greater border enforcement in terms of illegal immigration, or calls to further fund ICE (the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.) Almost any speech that comes out of Mariposa County and the state of Arizona I assume comes from unbridled xenophobia. Which is why, when I saw this series by TheDaily on the violence against and trafficking of people on the border of the United States and Mexico, I needed to question my own judgments on the issue of immigration and border protection.
The multi-part series is graphic and disturbing, showing the torture of hundreds of men and women who are smuggled across the border, locked in drop houses and then beaten. Their screams are recorded on cell phone cameras and played to their relatives back home in order to extort money from them. It's sickening and a debasement of human lives that has turned the need for immigration reform and some form of guest-worker solution into a question of human rights
The need for some form of legislation is a question or urgency, not just for the lives of the men and women within this country, but for the hundreds who are exploited for attempting to come here.
You can see TheDaily's series on YouTube under the heading "New Mafia."
