Peter Lizdas: ICE won’t go after those creating wealth for big growers

So ICE netted 21 undocumented 7-11 workers, the result of raiding nearly 100 stores nationwide! Wow, I’m really impressed. Where we live – the San Joaquin Valley – I can guarantee that ICE could get a vastly greater haul any day when ag workers are in the fields, with a much smaller effort in terms of number of agents, time and expenditure of operating funds.

Easily 50 percent of the ag workers near where I live – and in many other localities in California, where ag is an important part of the economy – are undocumented. So why aren’t these “illegal aliens” – the so-called “low-hanging fruit” of the undocumented (i.e., “illegal”) population being arrested and hauled away by the busload? Any guesses? (Think of all the big-scale farmers and corporate farms ICE could be raiding for employing undocumented workers; workers who are, after all, the source of the wealth which flows to these entities because there can be no wealth without labor to create it. Perhaps I go too far afield.)

Does the phrase “theatrical farce” strike anyone else as appropriate regarding this ICE deployment?

This story was originally published January 16, 2018 at 11:48 AM with the headline "Peter Lizdas: ICE won’t go after those creating wealth for big growers."