Creepy creepiness

Via Buzzflash we hear that NPR's Morning Edition reported on Wednesday that

[t]he Department of Homeland Security is experimenting with a controversial new method to keep better track of immigrants who are applying to remain in the United States. It is requiring aliens in eight cities to wear electronic monitors 24 hours a day.

The ankle bracelets are the same monitors that some rapists and other convicted criminals have to wear on parole. But the government's pilot project is putting monitors on aliens who have never been accused of a crime.

Right now, some 1700 immigrants are being tracked this way. The defense of the program is that it's being applied to people who have been ordered to leave the country but who are appealing that decision; supposedly, the only alternative is to jail them because, claims Victor Cerda of Detention and Removal Operations at Homeland Security, tens of thousands of such people "abscond" yearly. "They bolt," he said in the audio of the story, available at the link.

But Cerda is being deceptive: A Justice Department study cited by story reporter Daniel Zwerdling says that most of the problem arises from bureaucratic bungling and failure to keep proper records.

What's more, if people want to "bolt," the bracelets won't do a flipping thing to prevent them: They can just cut the suckers off! For one example: On Monday, Theresa Mubang was sentenced to 17 years and six months in prison after being convicted in November on a charge of enslaving a girl from Cameroon. But she was sentenced in absentia: After her conviction, she was required to wear a monitor pending sentencing. In December, she took it off and fled, present whereabouts unknown.

Or how about this from the February 22 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Three area bail agencies have 60 days to avoid paying Westmoreland County $325,000 by locating Ralph Steven "Pretty Boy" Skundrich, a fugitive who has eluded authorities since last month.

Skundrich, 38, formerly of Valencia, Butler County, cut the ankle bracelet of an electronic monitoring device while living in a back room of a barbershop on Jan. 31, then failed to appear for trial two days later in Allegheny County on charges of drug possession and possession of instruments of a crime.

Bounty hunters are now looking for him.

So if the bracelets are ineffective against anyone who truly wants to run away and hide, what is the point of this program? What can it accomplish?

In practical terms of "homeland security," zippo. In political terms of "homeland security," terms intended to justify ever-wider, ever-more intrusive tracking of individuals, especially "foreigners," possibly a lot - because William Krar, as we all Terry Nichols know Timothy McVeigh, "foreigners" are where James Kopp the terrorist threat Eric Rudolph comes from!

And just to prove how dedicated they are to protecting us, Cerda told Zwerdling that if the pilot project works out, the Department for the Security of the Fatherland may require all non-citizens applying to stay here to wear the monitoring bracelets.

Yep, I feel much safer now. Move the warning level down to green.

Footnote: I put "abscond" in quotes because it was a quote in the original story, not because it seemed an odd word. Actually, abscond is one of my favorite words, along with others including impinge, obfuscate, and torpid.