LETTER TO THE EDITOR / THE DEPORTATION MACHINE

Roger C. Kostmayer

Peter Sean Brown is a 50 year old American citizen who was born in Philadelphia and now lives in Key West. He never lived abroad or spent time overseas. And yet Monroe County Sheriff Ramsay arrested Peter for violating probation involving marijuana, and then Ramsay cooperated with ICE (the federal Immigration Customs Enforcement agency) and turned Peter’s life into hell by holding him in jail and then turning him over to ICE for deportation. Peter protested and tried desperately to convince everyone that he wasn’t an illegal alien. He was ignored, ridiculed, bullied and unconstitutionally imprisoned for more than three weeks in Miami – away from family, friends, job and assistance. His employer and friends tried to confirm Peter’s legal status, but were ignored. ICE eventually released Peter in Miami without transportation back to his Key West home town.

This is just one example of what can happen when the feds act like gestapo and local sheriffs trample citizens’ constitutional rights. Appropriately, Sheriff Ramsay is being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU, among others.

Monroe County and 16 other Florida county sheriffs have signed special cooperative agreements with ICE because many of them are concerned about the illegality of their performing the aggressive actions ICE wants them to do locally. The BOA agreements are designed to get around constitutional violations. ICE wants to continue to increase the flow of immigrants they can incarcerate and deport – legally or otherwise. To accomplish this, ICE needs our local police to do the feds’ job – detention and deportation.

This situation is unacceptable, inhumane, unconstitutional (the 4th Amendment) and neither Key West nor Monroe County should permit our Hispanic friends and neighbors (and all of us) to be made less safe, nor should tax payers be forced to pay for such a federal invasion.

Our police and local facilities must not become force multipliers for Trump’s war on immigrants.

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