Bounty Hunted
Ari Berman
House Republicans finally found a solution to America's illegal immigrant problem: bounty hunters. As part of a bill to ban states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Rep. Pete Sessions (news, bio, voting record) inserted an amendment less than 24 hours before the vote establishing ten state-sponsored bounty hunter centers. Though bounty hunters are currently legal--more than 3,900 operate in Sessions' home state of Texas--the new plan allows bail bondsmen to nab suspected illegals even before a final deportation order has been issued.
The plan also evokes a number of uncomfortable precedents, including the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Part of the Compromise of 1850, the law allowed authorities to track down runaway slaves in any region of the country, including free states. Any person who failed to cooperate with the slave-hunters or assisted the slaves drew a $1,000 fine. As a result, 20,000 blacks fled to Canada via the underground railroad. Fourteen years later, after countless protests, Congress repealed the law.
"It illustrates the extremism of the House," Jeanne Butterfield of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said of the Slave law's 21st century counterpart. "We have law enforcement officers to enforce the law, not vigilantes," added Rep. Zoe Lofgren. (Global factoid: a recent row emerged between the governments of Colombia and Venezuela when bounty hunters snatched a Columbian rebel off the streets of Caracas.)
The bounty hunter provision also exhibits Pete Sessions' hard-right world-view and proclivity for making questionable comments in unquestionably bad taste. In a debate last year with Rep. Martin Frost, Sessions called September 11 a "home game" and Iraq the "away game." In another debate, when asked to comment on the gap between rich and poor, Sessions replied, "This is the only country in the world where the poor have color televisions." Local residents took special umbrage last April when Sessions named a post office in an African-American section of Dallas after the white wife of a political donor who didn't even live in the area. The crass insensitivity may have been due to the loss of Sessions' communication director, who was convicted for defrauding a fellow Representative last May.
To this day, Sessions still doesn't reside in his new Congressional district. Maybe a bounty hunter should come and move him.
Ari Berman
House Republicans finally found a solution to America's illegal immigrant problem: bounty hunters. As part of a bill to ban states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Rep. Pete Sessions (news, bio, voting record) inserted an amendment less than 24 hours before the vote establishing ten state-sponsored bounty hunter centers. Though bounty hunters are currently legal--more than 3,900 operate in Sessions' home state of Texas--the new plan allows bail bondsmen to nab suspected illegals even before a final deportation order has been issued.
The plan also evokes a number of uncomfortable precedents, including the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Part of the Compromise of 1850, the law allowed authorities to track down runaway slaves in any region of the country, including free states. Any person who failed to cooperate with the slave-hunters or assisted the slaves drew a $1,000 fine. As a result, 20,000 blacks fled to Canada via the underground railroad. Fourteen years later, after countless protests, Congress repealed the law.
"It illustrates the extremism of the House," Jeanne Butterfield of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said of the Slave law's 21st century counterpart. "We have law enforcement officers to enforce the law, not vigilantes," added Rep. Zoe Lofgren. (Global factoid: a recent row emerged between the governments of Colombia and Venezuela when bounty hunters snatched a Columbian rebel off the streets of Caracas.)
The bounty hunter provision also exhibits Pete Sessions' hard-right world-view and proclivity for making questionable comments in unquestionably bad taste. In a debate last year with Rep. Martin Frost, Sessions called September 11 a "home game" and Iraq the "away game." In another debate, when asked to comment on the gap between rich and poor, Sessions replied, "This is the only country in the world where the poor have color televisions." Local residents took special umbrage last April when Sessions named a post office in an African-American section of Dallas after the white wife of a political donor who didn't even live in the area. The crass insensitivity may have been due to the loss of Sessions' communication director, who was convicted for defrauding a fellow Representative last May.
To this day, Sessions still doesn't reside in his new Congressional district. Maybe a bounty hunter should come and move him.
