By: Daniel Nardini
This is getting too close to home. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wants to build a security facility in Crete, Illinois, for undocumented migrant workers that have been detained by ICE. Crete, a community of 10,000 residents, lies in Will County just 40 miles from Chicago itself. Home to Bible League International’s headquarters, the town was chosen by the federal government as a holding place for when these migrant workers will be deported. One of the reasons given why ICE chose this facility is because it will be “near enough for the families of the migrant inmates to be able to see their loved ones.” That may be true, but any way you look at it, the proposed site will be a prison.
Many of the residents of the town are not too thrilled about this—a prison is a prison and many of them fear what will happen to their property values if this prison is built. But there is one other underlying problem with this prison. The sole reason any of these inmates will be there is quite simply because they broke immigration laws. What exactly did U.S. President Barack Obama promise about only going after those undocumented who committed crimes that will be arrested, imprisoned and then deported? By and large, migrant workers do not commit crimes like rape, arson, murder, terrorism or sabotage. Yet these are the people who will be put into this proposed prison. Not hardened criminals, not dangerous people who need to be locked up, and not even people with violent mental problems that could make them a threat to society. We are talking about people whose sole crime is being in the country illegally who just happened to have been caught.
To their credit, the City of Chicago and Cook County do not want such a facility in their jurisdiction. This is because Cook County does not hold migrant workers. Yet this has not stopped ICE from holding tens of thousands of undocumented in Illinois and other parts of the U.S. Midwest. Last year alone, over 12,000 undocumented were deported by ICE from the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin. Even as I write this, tens of thousands of undocumented are languishing in prison simply because they are undocumented and nothing else. And this brings us back to Crete. Whatever the people of Crete, or even the State of Illinois may think, the chances are this prison will be built.
Migrant Prison Town USA
By: Daniel Nardini
Many of the residents of the town are not too thrilled about this—a prison is a prison and many of them fear what will happen to their property values if this prison is built. But there is one other underlying problem with this prison. The sole reason any of these inmates will be there is quite simply because they broke immigration laws. What exactly did U.S. President Barack Obama promise about only going after those undocumented who committed crimes that will be arrested, imprisoned and then deported? By and large, migrant workers do not commit crimes like rape, arson, murder, terrorism or sabotage. Yet these are the people who will be put into this proposed prison. Not hardened criminals, not dangerous people who need to be locked up, and not even people with violent mental problems that could make them a threat to society. We are talking about people whose sole crime is being in the country illegally who just happened to have been caught.
To their credit, the City of Chicago and Cook County do not want such a facility in their jurisdiction. This is because Cook County does not hold migrant workers. Yet this has not stopped ICE from holding tens of thousands of undocumented in Illinois and other parts of the U.S. Midwest. Last year alone, over 12,000 undocumented were deported by ICE from the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin. Even as I write this, tens of thousands of undocumented are languishing in prison simply because they are undocumented and nothing else. And this brings us back to Crete. Whatever the people of Crete, or even the State of Illinois may think, the chances are this prison will be built.