The INS is a large bureaucracy that makes lots of mistakes. Their employees and special agents will readily admit that unfortunate events happen. Remember that the Portland papers have covered these events in the past and Portland has even been referred to on occassion as "DE-Portland" because of thes events. INS is a huge government agency. It makes mistakes. These mistakes should be admitted and measures taken to correct the mistakes. But, I would be stunned if anyone from INS would ever make the bald statement that INS can arrest, detain or hold anyone, alien or otherwise, valid visa or not, without proper due process. It is not sanctioned procedure. People can be held and detained only for cause, ie., false ID; lying on applications; smuggling; entering the US illegally; being out of status; etc. There has to be a reason. Even when the Chinese businesswoman was held last year on suspicion of a false passport, in what turned out to be a valid, though weatherbeaten, passport, the detention was procedurally correct and based upon a proper reason. Even though it rightfully offended everyone's sensibilities that she was treated the way she was, and was a very bad decision made by an INS employee, it was not arbitrary. Even though procedurally correct, the decision was terrible. OK. Mistake. Apologise, do whatever is necessary to make amends. Re-educate, reassign, re-train, or even fire the employee if that's the solution. But these things happen in all types of situations, private businesss as well as law enforcement. Is this evidence of an evil empire? Of course not. And by the way. arbitrary detention is actionable if done under color of law and without legal justification. It is considered outside the scope of employment and penalties will attach. There are remedies for such conduct. 18 USC 1983. -----Original Message----- From: owner-crime@/var/spool/majordomo/lists/crime [mailto:owner-crime@/var/spool/majordomo/lists/crime]On Behalf Of Crispin Cowan Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 3:15 PM To: JACKSON Di M Cc: BAIRD Dion E * DAS DOIT; Toby Kohlenberg; webb1973; crime@private Subject: Re: CRIME Kudos to Acting Police Chief Andrew Kirkland JACKSON Di M wrote: >Do we have any INS folks in this group .... My understanding is, and don't >quote me, but any person who enters USA on a work permit, visa and/or green >card are advised that they can be detained and/or held for no reason by the >INS. > For *any* reason? Or for suspicion of immigration violations? The former would be rather horrifying, and makes "legal resident" a fairly meaningless status if you can be arbitrarily detained by the state. I went through the INS procedures, and while I do remember the FBI background check, I do not recall being told about arbitrary detention. But there was a lot of paperwork, and I could easily have forgotten it. >As for your law enforcement comments - I was just like you, till I did a >ride-along. Quiet frankly. Law enforcement is a thankless job, they deal >with all the undesirables and they are "dammed if they do and dammed if they >don't". Everybody deserves credit and/or praise for doing there job. A >Deputy I went on a ride-along with saved a boy at Multnomah Falls. He took a >rope from his patrol car and scaled down a rock face to save this boys life. >There was nothing in the newspaper about it ... pretty sad. > I agree with all of that, and I am quite sure that most law officers don't get half the credit they deserve. The problem is that law officers have a great deal of authority, creating opportunity for abuse by a few bad apples in the batch. The treatment for that abuse opportunity is oversight, which is (in part) what the Bill of Rights (things like Miranda) are about. My issue is not with hard-working law officers, it is with the Federal administration seeking to strip away oversight protections. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com Security Hardened Linux Distribution: http://immunix.org Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
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