Postville redux

The below quote is from a blog by the elected leadership of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), meant to help focus the national debate on the real facts about immigration and the means to achieve a just and rational system. AILA is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration laws, advance the quality of immigration law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members. The blog entry is titled Postville, One Year Later:

To the government, Postville was a cold clinical experiment. For the first time it sought to criminalize immigrants on a mass scale. In Postville, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, using the federal identity theft statute as a hammer, forged serious crimes out of mere civil immigration violations. No longer would it be enough to simply arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. They had to send them home as felons.