Sweeps Don’t Work

After more than a year of working with illegal residents in the amnesty program, you would think that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and its Western regional commissioner, Harold W. Ezell, would be more sensitive and sensible in their approach to illegal immigration.

But it was business-as-usual Thursday in Orange and Placentia when Border Patrol agents rousted day workers who had gathered in the hope of finding jobs to feed their families.

The agency’s oppressive and harassing attitude and policies unfortunately persist, which makes the sweeps even more damaging and less supportable than ever before, because the need for them, as evidenced Thursday, is far less.

In Orange, the Border Patrol swooped down on about 90 workers. After checking identifications, agents found that 51% of them had a legal right to be in this country. In a similar raid in Placentia, where about 100 day workers had congregated, a check of papers showed that 78% of them were in the country legally.

The results of those raids led one Border Patrol official to note that large gatherings of laborers are not always large gatherings of illegal aliens. That is so obvious that the patrol should promptly re-evaluate its policy of continuing such sweeps.

Aside from being disruptive, the sweeps are unproductive. That is one reason that we have long opposed the brutish approach that terrorizes all Latinos--Americans and legal and illegal residents alike--forcing them, unlike other people on the street, to prove their legal status merely because they are Latino.

It has been apparent for years that the time and energies of federal agents would be better invested at the border trying to stop the flow of illegal immigration, rather than making neighborhood sweeps 100 miles from the border. The sweeps serve no constructive purpose and cannot effectively control immigration. With the new amnesty law in effect, they make even less sense than they did before.

Reason and sensitivity were not enough to persuade Ezell to stop rousting the groups of workers who gather in the hope of being picked up by employers looking to hire day laborers. Maybe the new realization that the results simply don’t justify the cost and effort will make him realize the wisdom of finally stopping the sweeps.