State agency hears testimony on treatment of farm workers

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: The Muskegon Chronicle

For 17 days he was chained, jailed and threatened with deportation to Mexico. For 17 days Brigido Oregon, a West Michigan migrant farm worker from Texas, pleaded his innocence.
On the 17th day, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed he, indeed, was a U.S. citizen, and allowed him to leave jail.

The federal immigration officials told him that it was a case of mistaken identity, said Oregon, whose case is being investigated by Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance, a Grand Rapids-based law firm that advocates on behalf of farm workers. Oregon currently lives in Grand Rapids.

That's the kind of stories Oregon and other farm workers shared with the Michigan Civil Rights Commission during a public hearing Monday at Grand Valley State University's Cook-DeWitt Center.

"They came to my house. I told them I was legal -- I wasn't illegal," the Spanish-speaking Oregon told the commission through a translator. "But they still put me in chains.



Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/08/state_agency_hears_testimony_o.html

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and I thought it only happened in the movies like the inglorious bastards

[mbperrin]

1. They're brown. They're treated like shit.

Any more questions I can answer?

[AlphaCentauri]

2. yes, is it normal? or a cultural manifestation?

[mbperrin]

4. If by normal you mean usual, yes it is. Cultural? Definitely.

And as long as we have buttheads exploiting the idea of an "invasion" from Mexico, it will persist or worsen.

I hate that.

[hmorehead]

3. Its racial profiling

the law is required to prove guilt, we aren't supposed to have to prove innocence.