Cross-posted from Sum of Change
So folks in Las Vegas for the 2010 Netroots Nation conference got a surprise when they showed up for the session on Civil Rights in the Modern Era to find a checkpoint of “ICE agents” looking for illegal European immigrants:
“Illegal European immigrants are coming here, leaving anchor babies, and just running rampant over our national system.”
“We’ve had a lot of illegal Europeans trying to come into the country, they bring all kinds of diseases.”
The agents asked people suspected of possibly being from Europe if they had proper papers to be in the Americas. Those people who could not produce identification had to take a retinal scan in order to enter the panel on civil rights.
“It was degrading, it was incredibly degrading.”
“I felt a little bit threatened at first.”
“They’ve massacred millions of people, they’ve destroyed the national environment, and it’s just crazy, it’s got to stop, so we really need heavier border enforcement here.”
“I can kind of understand why the Native Americans would want to profile me coming through, but I don’t think it’s right.”
“I was outraged, I mean, nobody has a right to do that.”
“Even though it was a total satire, it was right on. And you can begin to get a sense of what that would be like to constantly have the fear that you will be asked to produce papers.”
“We’re all human beings, we really are all equal. We live in a global economy, a global social world, we are all one people.”
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
