Thursday, December 12, 2019

Information Retrieval Charges

It's my day off, and I have the house to myself: 
HouseMate has gone out of town to see a woman whose husband ICE sent back to Liberia yesterday, where the husband came from ten years ago. This American-born woman has two children with her Liberian husband...

ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] seized this guy almost two years ago and this whole time has detained him without charges... 
HM has headed up efforts by her Catholic social-justice group to help the couple file multiple requests for a stay and other bureaucratic matters. This cost thousands of dollars, which the group raised from parishioners and friends.

The whole thing is so much like a dystopian novel or movie, it's sometimes hard to believe it's real.

I won't go into details, except to touch on the least emotional aspect: 
the financial expense of it all. 
The government takes a working man away from his family, and now his wife (who works) and kids require government aid to make ends meet.
And holding this guy must have cost a fortune.
All because he had some legal misdemeanors when he first arrived in the United States as a twenty year old.

Ah--here's the solution to the expense, in the opening of the movie Brazil: Information Retrieval Charges--people found guilty pay for their own detention and interrogation.
[This guy wasn't "found guilty" since he was never tried for anything.]

Listen to the Minister of Information from 1:30 on--we've been hearing
this sort of rhetoric since 9/11:

3 comments:

  1. It's happening in the UK and other places too. Jobsworth beaurocracy, no humanity or common sense

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  2. Time to watch Brazil again.

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  3. OMG -- that's appalling. How can they deport him if he's married to an American woman? I do not understand our government.

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