Was I dreamin'?

[libodem]

or did i hear of a big nation-wide round up of illegal immigrants, gang members and riff-raff. I thought I heard 144 from Idaho. It seems like a scarey, Nazi, tactic. Not a word on the latest/greatest....did it happen? Or am I believing my hallucinations?

[Heidi]

1. Sorry. You weren't dreaming.

Not sure what you mean by riff-raff, but the government arrested 10,000 of what _they_ believe are riff-raff.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20050415/ts_washpost/a53043_2005apr14

[libodem]

2. that's what I thought

10,000. seems like one of those drug stings when they kick in the doors of several houses all around town at the same time. Big spy network on the citizens. I don't like it.

[DrDebug]

3. It's just propaganda

Those 10000 were people they forgot to arrest despite knowing where they are...

But they needed a good story, so they called all the press and announce a major clean up operation. Those arrested were mainly minor criminals except for some murders which they forgot about as well. But then again that's extra bonus points for the propaganda.

[Heidi]

4. Propaganda that cost "we the people"

a _whole_ lot of money: $900,000 in costs to the U.S. Marshal's Service; no word yet on how much it cost local police and sheriff's departments or the various state patrol agencies involved. If we had a realiable media which actually followed up on these things, it would be interesting to know how many of these arrests result in prosecution and actual sentences. Drug cases accounted for nearly half of Operation Falcon arrests.

I don't condone criminal behavior, but I do have to wonder how many of the Operation Falcon arrests were for white collar crimes of the sort associated with Enron, etc.