What’s the best way to help workers form a union in a workplace where managers have spent years wantonly violating labor laws by threatening and intimidating workers into resisting unionization? If you’re the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the answer would seem to be “get rid of the workers.” At least, that is one of the main recommendations contained within a rather confusing new CIS report on the aftermath of the January 2007 immigration raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Holding up Smithfield as a prototype for the nation, the CIS report vaguely suggests that destructive immigration raids and a flawed electronic employment-verification system will not only succeed in draining millions of unauthorized immigrants from the United States, but bolster unionization for American workers, too. These are fanciful notions at best.

Last Friday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced changes to the controversial 287(g) program—a program which allows state and local police agencies to partner with ICE to enforce federal immigration laws. DHS also announced that, rather than waiting for the new policies to be implemented and tested, it has expanded the problematic 287(g) program with 11 new Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs).

This week, two comprehensive reports on the health of immigrant detainees were released by Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. As Public News Service reports, “Immigrants are, literally, dying for decent care.”

“One hopes that the current confluence of crises will inspire bold thought and a momentum capable of breaking away from the fearful and violent mindset that seems to have dogged so much national policy for almost the last decade. We need to make a different world for ourselves. And for others.”

By working to close Guantánamo, peppering his speech with talk of law and order, and restoring US image to the world abroad, Obama risks muddying up his accomplishments with a blatant hypocrisy. We simply cannot lead the way when investing in detention systems from Arizona to Iraq. When did prisons become the solution so many of our problems?

On this week’s Immigration Wire, we examine approaches to immigration that do nothing to synchronize real-life America with the America in songs and storybooks