The DHS Follies

Noted without comment:

Ending speculation about the fate of the Rio Grande Valley's undocumented immigrants during a hurricane evacuation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has confirmed it will check the citizenship both of people boarding buses to leave the Valley and at inland traffic checkpoints.

Those determined to be in the country illegally will be taken to detention centers away from the hurricane's path and later processed for deportation.

"It's business as usual at the checkpoints," said Dan Doty, spokesman for CBP's Rio Grande Valley sector. "We'll still check everybody."

Locals responded with predictions of humanitarian disaster.

"We can't wait to see the helicopter photos of us sitting on roofs," said the Rev. Mike Seifert, a priest and activist based in a colonia outside Brownsville. The many area families with one or more undocumented members would just refuse to evacuate, he said.

"Imagine," Seifert said. "We're all in an uproar, everybody's in an enormous hurry, there's just a narrow window of opportunity and you get to the place with the buses and the Border Patrol's checking people. You're not going to go."

In the disastrous wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, officials in the Valley have pondered the politics of mass evacuation, illegal immigration and the checkpoints that filter northbound traffic every day.

aWol, just stay your ass at home...

Seriously. Just go to Crawford and wait for next January. If anybody needs you, they'll know where to find you...playin' rancher, clearin' brush and still scared of horses.

Every damned time you do anything, it turns out to bad.

Desperate to redeem his image after Katrina, the Federal Disaster jetted off to SoCal yesterday to roll up his sleeves for a photo-op. Hey! It's hard work! Photo-oppin' and hand shakin' and consolin' an' fakin' concern...

And snarling traffic and extending the misery of others. Residents who were allowed to return to their homes were stuck in traffic for hours on end and firefighters were cut off from food and showers while the pResidential motorcade disrupted life even further.

Bush concluded his trip with remarks to the firefighters and the public at Kit Carson Park in Escondido.

His departure from the command post allowed traffic to flow once again from northbound Interstate 15 and the West Bernardo Drive exit through the streets of Rancho Bernardo, letting motorists get to their homes or the recreation center.

Some of the firefighters seemed more interested in a shower and a hot meal than Bush's visit.

Still covered in ashes, firefighters Danny Chandler and Chris Cortright from Mount Laguna waited in the back of a pickup. They could see the showers and the food tent, but the president's visit kept them and dozens of other firefighters from moving. Chandler had been fighting the fire in Ramona for 24 hours. Cortright had been at it for 48 hours.

“I appreciate him being here,” Chandler said, drinking Gatorade as he waited in the sun. “But they could have organized this better. I'd just as soon eat.”

In seven years, you have been wrong about every fucking thing you have done. Every photo-op has been a sham, like when the lights were shining on you in New Orleans, but no where else.

You have the support of 24% who are, the case could be made, simply Non Compos Mentis. Everybody else just wants you to go away. Since Nancy is pathetic and useless and won't bring impeachment charges against you, just go to fucking Crawford and stay the hell out of the way. Everybody hates you. Go eat worms or sumthin.'