04 Apr An Uncontroversial Enforcement of U.S. Immigration Laws
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a famously lax enforcer of U.S. immigration laws, has started to use its broad detention powers to pick up suspected human rights abusers or war criminals living in the United States. As the Washington Post reports:
Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro seemed to fit in well with his neighbors in Virginia’s placid horse country. The quiet, genteel man from Argentina opened an art and antiques store after moving into a farmhouse last year in The Plains.
[snip]
That unassuming life imploded Sunday morning, when U.S. immigration agents bundled the retired Argentine army major into a van to face criminal charges of visa fraud and eventual deportation to his native country, where he is accused of serving as the chief interrogator at a clandestine torture facility known as La Perla during Argentina’s Dirty War in the 1970s and 1980s.
Barreiro was among three former South American military officers suspected of war crimes whose arrests were announced yesterday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has renewed its efforts to crack down on alleged human rights violators living as fugitives in the United States.
I think this is one of those few cases where we will see broad support for strictly enforcing U.S. immigration laws both from the left and right.
I agree. But, of course, the Right will only support this because the US does not have any sypathies for Barreiro or his erstwhile cause; for an apparently different case, see here.
Typo: sympathies.