Wampum

These went up on the gates of Camp Dodge. The Des Moines Register reported that workers arrested at Swift & Co. packing plants in Iowa and Nebraska were being held at Camp Dodge. 90 workers from the Swift plant in Marshalltown, and most of the 261 workers from the Swift plant in Grand Island, Nebraska.(Source: Mike Marty with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union)

Every one of the workers who had to have his or her proof of legal residency brought from their residence, not to the job site, but to the detention facility, each round trip costing bus fare, child care, incidental expences, and hotel cost -- a $100 to $300 hit two weeks before Christmas.

This is Vilsack's acid koolaid test. He's issued a statement, calling on the federal government to provide information to the families who are trying to find out if their relative is inside Camp Dodge. Vilsack has also asked the feds to let lawyers into the detention area so they can meet with their clients, some of whom are to be charged and transferred to county jails.

He hasn't read the large print. Governors of States do not ask federal officers who've detained residents of the State to let the detainees have access to due process, they arrest law breakers, without exception. They seize, and if necessary free, prisioners who are being improperly or illegally detained.

The US DoJ Office of the Federal Detention Trustee Detention Standards and Compliance Division website, and the US HSD Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Operations Manual. See section 17 in particular.

In Eastern Iowa, where MB and I and the kids spent several weeks this summer, we met a lot of Swift workers. I hope for the sake of the detainees that Governor Vilsack understands the importance of due process, and that he can screw his courage up to the sticking point. If he doesn't, or does but can't, he's just decoration.