Last week, as many of the nation’s Latino Democratic operatives and immigrant rights activists expressed high hopes in Denver for the future of comprehensive immigration reform, the reality of the nation’s current immigration policy was vividly displayed in tiny Laurelton, Mississippi.

Nearly 600 workers were swept up by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a worksite raid at Howard Industries, an electrical parts manufacturer. The sweep in Laurel, population 18,000, made it the largest immigration raid in US history, eclipsing the raid earlier this summer in Postville, IA (click here to listen to this recent NPR radio update from Postville), which continues to be in the news.

The very day that federal immigration authorities arrested undocumented workers at Howard industries, the Obama campaign removed every mention of immigration reform from a convention speech by Bronx Rep. José Serrano, one of Congress’ most persistent advocates of comprehensive immigration reform.

Despite the high hopes of immigrant rights advocates and legislators that the next president will finally take on and win reforms to federal immigration laws, both McCain and Obama have been all but silent on the issue as the election approaches.

As recently as last year, both candidates supported legislative proposals that would have granted legal status to many of the nation’s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants–but both start their policy statements today with the need to get tough on undocumented immigrants first.   The candidates have each, at times, supported proposals to strengthen the nation’s southern border fence and to penalize employers who hire undocumented workers. Such law-and-order strategies continue to appear in their platforms today.

On the policy pages of his website, Senator McCain highlights the nation’s notoriously porous southern border and states:

When we have achieved our border security goal, we must enact and implement the other parts of practical, fair and necessary immigration policy.

For his part, Senator Obama’s campaign website outlines his support for

a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, not violate the law, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.

Despite much-discussed efforts to mobilize Latino voters, Feet in 2 Worlds reporters covering the convention in Denver found few Democratic operatives willing to broach the subject of immigration policy, and then only in conversations far from the convention’s main stage, and usually in the context of encouraging Latino voters to support Senator Obama’s candidacy.

In fact, a form of détente has emerged: both presidential campaigns appear to have decided to broach the immigration subject only in smaller discussions with tailored audiences, such as Latino civil rights activists (at the annual conferences of the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens), or wealthy Silicon Valley campaign donors.

A FOX News producer detailed a fractious debate within the Republican Party as it tried to finalize its final immigration policy platform last week before its own convention. She wrote that some delegates wanted platform language that rejected all efforts at “comprehensive immigration reform,” because they considered the phrase “a code word for amnesty.”

The recently-released GOP platform devotes a whole one and half pages to immigration policy with a focus on border security, a rejection of “amnesty” and “en masse legalizations,” and a call for English to be the official language of the US. For its part, the Democratic Party platform promises, “tough, practical, and humane immigration reform in the first year of the next administration.” The document also underlines the need to, “require undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.” Notably, both parties start their platforms by stressing the need for expanded border enforcement.

Obama himself made one mention of immigration policy during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday, but without any prescriptions for change:

Passions fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

Despite the high hopes, the current face of the issue is rooted in the Bush administration’s enforcement-only approach. In addition to a series of high-profile, large-scale work site immigration raids, the other standout federal program this year was ‘Operation Scheduled Departure.’ The short-lived effort, which sought to encourage undocumented immigrants to deport themselves, was quietly laid to rest at the end of August after a dismal three-week pilot phase. Only eight immigrants volunteered to return to their home countries through the program.

In Postville, IA, immigrant workers were detained, charged and tried in a matter of days. A majority of the 289 workers swept up in Postville’s raid were put into fast-track deportation proceedings and flown back to their home countries within a month of the raid.

Mississippi immigrant rights advocates, including the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), reported signs of immigration agents preparing for a large-scale raid in Laurel over the weekend, establishing roadblocks at Wal-Mart parking lots and renting most of the hotel rooms in the small town. MIRA also reported possible preparations for another raid at the Southern Hens poultry plant in Mossell, MS, where ICE agents were reportedly preparing to put the plant under lockdown.

In the midst of an increased federal focus on apprehending undocumented immigrants, many undocumented immigrants reportedly were reluctant to evacuate from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and opted to stay behind and ride out the recent Hurricane Gustav. Despite assurances from the Department of Homeland Security to the contrary, immigrants were worried federal agents would institute immigration documentation checks on the buses provided to evacuate residents, according to the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice.

Mississippi legislators recently passed a new state law that makes it a felony for businesses to employ undocumented immigrants. It is part of a new wave of state-based immigration laws dubbed ‘employer sanctions’ and enacted in states with large immigrant populations. These laws have been decried by business owners, immigrant advocates, and workers’ rights activists as impractical, unfair, and likely to drive immigrant workers further into an underground economy.

In a nation that is increasingly black and brown, and in an election year when one of the major party presidential nominees is the child of an African immigrant, there is still no clarity about what the next administration might do to transform federal immigration law.

In an interesting update to the ongoing national debate over police officers enforcing immigration law (and to Feet in 2 Worlds’ reporting on the issue), Hartford, CT’s City Council voted unanimously Monday to prohibit all city workers, including police officers, from asking about residents’ immigration status except in criminal cases and from turning over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities solely due to their lack of legal status. The local ordinance, which must still be approved by Mayor Eddie Perez, also bars city employees from asking residents about their immigration status as they access city services.

Perez says he supports the idea behind the resolution, but it’s still not clear if he will approve it: in the past he‘s cited a policy (issued by Hartford Chief of Police Daryl Roberts in March 2008 that allows officers to only inquire about the immigration status of those involved in a criminal investigation) as enough to encourage city residents to cooperate with police.

The new resolution expands upon the existing policy by prohibiting city workers from asking about immigration status based on the rationale that immigration law is a federal issue and therefore not under the jurisdiction of local police, which are only responsible for enforcing criminal laws.

The vote comes after a public firestorm engulfed Hartford last month during public hearings where dozens of residents argued for the resolution, and means Hartford could join the ranks of several other cities including New York, Los Angeles, Newark, and its Connecticut neighbor New Haven, which have all enacted similar ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ city policies protecting residents’ immigration status. Metropolitan police chiefs such as New York’s Ray Kelly and Los Angeles’ Bill Bratton have argued in favor of such policies in the name of community policing and to encourage immigrant witnesses and crime victims to come forward to cooperate with law enforcement officials. Feet in 2 Worlds reported on the controversy in Connecticut last month as often emotional and heated public hearings raged on the issue.

Hartford’s pending decision to grant its residents confidentiality of their immigration status comes as the federal government seeks more ways to enforce the nation’s immigration laws and deport undocumented immigrants to their home countries via a menu of programs; an approach widely excoriated by immigrant rights advocates.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws, announced last month that it had deported over 270,000 undocumented immigrants in 2007 – an agency record. In May, criminal defense attorneys and immigrant rights advocates alike denounced the nation’s largest immigration raid in history at the now-infamous Agriprocessors plant in Postville, IA; over 300 undocumented workers were put into fast-track deportation proceedings and whisked out of the country amid questions of whether they were granted due process.

And last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new ‘self-deportation’ pilot program, ‘Operation Scheduled Departure’, which invites undocumented residents to volunteer to deport themselves by coming forward to immigration authorities. In return, they are not put in detention facilities and are given 90 days to wind up their affairs in the US before returning to their home countries. As of last week, only one individual had volunteered to leave the country through the program.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent, is actively seeking to enroll local police departments in partnership programs that train local law enforcement officers as immigration agents. Dubbed 287(g) programs for the section of federal immigration law they reference, several cities and counties nationwide have entered into such agreements– notably Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes metropolitan Phoenix.

Despite growing signs the practice is extremely expensive (a recent investigation by Arizona’s East Valley Tribune found Maricopa County’s participation in the program resulted in a $1.3 million deficit; had a negative impact on arrest rates (they plunged by 75% between 2005 and 2007); and slowed response times (two-thirds of patrol cars responding to the most serious 911 calls arrived late), counties and cities nationwide continue to sign up for the program, particularly given the continued federal legislative vacuum on the issue. Feet in 2 Worlds’ Diego Graglia’s recent dispatches from Manassas, VA illustrate the arguments and heightened emotions behind both sides’ views on the issue.

Though Connecticut is a small state, Hartford’s neighbor Danbury (less than 50 miles away) has taken a dramatically different approach to its undocumented residents and signed a 287(g) agreement with federal authorities. Meanwhile, local domestic violence and immigrant groups joined a new statewide task force convened by the Speaker of the State House of Representativesthat hopes to determine why many of the city’s immigrant women and other victims of domestic abuse are not reporting crimes and serving as witnesses in criminal investigations.

Wednesday and Thursday, we visited a couple of small towns in North Carolina to get a sense of what Latinos in rural areas think about the elections and what issues matter to them at the moment. I had the feeling that we always hear a lot about Mexicans in Chicago and L.A., Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, Cubans in Florida… but we seldom get news about the people who live in small towns across the country.

Diego Graglia is documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year as he travels from New York City to Mexico City. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino-The Road to the Latino Vote visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

On our first day on the road we arrived in Manassas, Virginia, not far from Washington D.C. Our goal was to revisit the intense and controversial debate on immigration that has been taking place there.

A year ago the Prince William County supervisors launched a crackdown on undocumented immigrants. They passed a resolution whose outstanding feature allows local law enforcement to inquire about the immigration status of people they suspect of committing a crime or misdemeanor (even jaywalking.) Officers can also report undocumented immigrants to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation processing.

Since then, the Latino population in the county appears to have plummeted.

As soon as we arrived, I met Teresita Jacinto, a spokeswoman for Mexicanos Sin Fronteras/Mexicans Without Borders. Listen here to a Podcast of my interview with Jacinto.

Teresita Jacinto at 9500 Liberty St., “El Muro de la Calle Libertad.” (More photos here)

I interviewed her in front of what people in Manassas call The Wall — and those supporting immigrants regardless of their status call El Muro de la Calle Libertad (Liberty Street wall). It’s painted on the side of a burnt-down house by Mexican-born owner Gaudencio Fernández. In the wall’s strong message, he calls Prince William County, “the national capital of intolerance.” [Read the full text in this photo.] Unfortunately when we arrived Fernández was on vacation in Mexico.

The wall has been the subject of controversy and the target of attacks. As you’ll read in this story, Fernández has to go to court after his vacation. But I was more concerned with understanding its message.

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In an editorial today The New York Times castigates the Bush administration over the treatment of undocumented immigrants arrested at Agriprocessors, the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant that was the site of the largest worksite immigration raid in US history. The Times accuses the administration of, “abandoning mercy and proportionality,” in its treatment of the workers, and its lack of attention to egregious health and safety violations at the plant.

Feet in 2 Worlds has reported extensively on this issue. Learn more by reading our posts “Two Standards of Justice: Are Employers Paying a Price for Illegal Immigration?” and Advice to Journalists: keep the “immigration crisis” on the front burner.

Operation Scheduled Departure, a new federal initiative that ‘encourages’ illegal immigrants to voluntarily step forward and leave the country without being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will launch August 5^th in five cities across the United States.

The initiative was labeled as part of the “theater of the absurd” by pro-immigration reform groups, who noted that ICE seems unable to understand that illegal immigrants are in the U.S. because they wish to live here and that few would come forward.

Nonetheless the program may provide ICE with a PR advantage as they escalate the pace of raids across the country and detain more undocumented immigrants.

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In a rural Iowa town that was once a bustling model of small-town resurgence, scores of families are left to rely on local food pantries and churches for their meals. Parents have been left to  watch over their children while wearing ankle bracelets but are unable to seek work to provide for them.  The school’s population has been halved, and a gang of minors makes a weekly trip to Cedar Rapids to report to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency which monitors their status. There’s nothing left to do but wait. Their fate doesn’t rest in their own hands, reports New America Media in a series of articles on the effects of the largest immigration raid in history has had on a local community.

And they are the lucky ones. Nearly 400 workers were arrested and detained in the largest immigration raid in history at Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.  Three-quarters of these workers were hustled through the legal system in a matter of a few weeks — arrested, detained and then allowed to plead guilty to charges they didn’t understand, unaware that they were facing criminal charges and were being sent to prison for sentences averaging five months each. The treatment of these workers lead a long-time court interpreter and college professor, Erik Camayd-Freixas, to break his professional code of silence to report on the abuses that these workers faced in a 12-page essay that made national headlines.  After serving time in jail, largely for identity theft including social security fraud, the workers will be deported back to their home countries, torn apart from their wives or children who are under government supervision in Postville.

For Agriprocessors, however, it’s back to business as usual. After a dip in production and escalating Kosher meat prices (the company produces about 40 percent of the country’s Kosher meat) production is nearly back to normal reports the Jewish Journal. So far only two low-level managers have been charged, despite the government accusing Agriprocessors of paying workers below the federal minimum wage, hiring minors, numerous safety violations and allegations of worker abuse that included a manager duct-taping one workers’ eyes and beating him with a meat hook. The company has also been accused of providing workers with false documentation, such as social security cards, to work at the plant.

There appears to be a stark disparity in the government prosecution of those who work illegally in this country and those who provide them with work despite bombastic claims by ICE officials that employers are no longer safe from prosecution.

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“Our job as journalists is to continue to write about the immigration crisis so it will earn the place it should have among the priorities of the new president.”