Vol. 73/No. 14      April 13, 2009

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced that hundreds of agents will be added to the effort to assist the Mexican government in fighting drug cartels. According to the Houston Chronicle, Franceska Perot, agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco and Explosives in Houston, confirmed that a “large majority” of 100 federal gun agents that will be transferred to the border region in the next 45 days will be assigned to the Houston area.

Speaking at a Militant Labor Forum March 27, Ulman described a letter sent by Mayor Bill White to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 16 in which he asked to “expedite Houston’s request to enter into a 287(g) Jail Mutual Operating Agreement (MOA).”

The mayor’s letter said, “Please work with Chief Harold Hurtt of the Houston Police Department (HPD) and his command staff to speed the process for cross training our police officers and establishing necessary communications, technological and logistical connections to provide our officers with access to the IDENT database and any other resources available under the 287(g) program.”

“ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is already in the Houston jails,” said Ulman. “This is a further step to give the cops more leeway to stop, harass, and arrest working people. It is aimed not only at intimidating immigrants but working people broadly.”

Police chief Hurtt outlined March 19 that his department has been instructed by the mayor since 2006 to follow procedures “for fingerprinting those who are arrested by HPD, especially if they stated they were not born in the U.S. and not U.S. citizens.” He continued, “The fingerprinting allows us to run their prints through the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System to determine if the arrestee has prints on file in the national database.”

Hurtt went on to explain, “Since October 2006 we have allowed ICE complete access to the city jails. The city jail is a temporary holding facility and those committing serious crimes are transferred to the Harris County jail.”

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office this past October became the first in the nation to participate in a program that gives jailers access to a database that has more detailed information on suspects’ immigration status through an automated fingerprint check. There have been several protests over the past two years demanding that ICE get out of Harris County jails.

“In order to try to get out of their deep crisis, the capitalists have to not only destroy massive amounts of capital to expand production, they have to dramatically reduce our standard of living, worsen working conditions for everyone,” Ulman explained. “They know that as working people we will resist. The militarization of the border is part of getting working people in the United States accustomed to seeing the military used against workers in the U.S. in preparation for class battles to come.”

The socialist candidates and their supporters have met a strong response as they campaigned in the streets and at the University of Houston campus this week. Much of this response has been favorable to their demand for the immediate legalization of all immigrants.

Maria Cervantes, a 40-year-old house cleaner, met the candidates and their supporters at a shopping center across the street from their campaign office. She told them that she doesn’t accept the government’s claims that troops will make the border safe. “I think the militarization makes it more dangerous. We will keep coming across the border because we come here looking for work. We have to do that because the situation in our countries is very serious. We don’t have another option,” she said.  
 
 
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