by Sidney Sweeting
Our immigration department decided to detain the illlegal immigrants in North Eleuthera last week and arrived on the island at 2am. It was common knowledge in the community by 10pm the previous evening.
Those who were of illegal status had ample time to go into hiding
Consequently, those people who were rudely detained were mostly immgrants with legal status. Of the 193 detained, 179 had legitimate papers and they were all brought to Nassau and placed in detention. Mr. Abner Pinder of Spanish Wells had to make arrangements to have the 179 returned. He has been promised a reimbursement of his expenses and I wish him luck. So, the Gestapo tactics of the department netted 14 illegals!
The immigration department placed the blame of this embarrassing fiasco on the fact that so many illegal immigrants have false papers. This blogger believes that the raid should have been in the immigration department to detain those individuals who are responsible for issuing the illegal papers. It is surely not the fault of the 179 who are legitimate.
We would be hard pressed to find someone who can sucessfully argue that we must not make every decent attempt to ensure that everyone here is of legal status but surely bungling attempts like the one last week is not the way to do it.
