By Albor Ruiz, New York Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/04/04/2010–04-04_haiti_refugee_fiasco_stinks_of_ice_idiocy.html

Is it incom­pe­tence or cal­lous­ness? Stu­pid­ity or just plain old racism?

It’s not easy to fathom what is behind the U.S. Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment agency’s embar­rass­ing tra­jec­tory of abuse that was splashed across the front pages of the news last week.

As if the rev­e­la­tions of cruel treat­ment of men­tally ill detainees and a depor­ta­tion “quota” pol­icy that instructed ICE agents to go after “easy tar­gets” — undoc­u­mented work­ers — instead of focus­ing on crim­i­nals and secu­rity threats had not been enough, last Thurs­day The New York Times pub­lished a new report that bor­dered on the surreal.

Three dozen Haitians res­cued after the killer earth­quake by U.S. forces and brought to Florida believ­ing they would get safety and med­ical treat­ment were imme­di­ately hand­cuffed upon arrival and thrown into the Broward County Tran­si­tional Cen­ter, a pri­vately oper­ated jail in Pom­pano Beach, the news­pa­per reported.

What makes this inci­dent so out­ra­geous is that it involves peo­ple who lost every­thing in the Jan. 12 earth­quake, includ­ing par­ents, chil­dren and friends, and who in some cases had been them­selves res­cued from under the ruins of Port-au-Prince.

Fol­low­ing the quake, which claimed an esti­mated 220,000 lives, many sur­vivors sought aid at the air­port and in the con­fu­sion the 36 Haitians were ush­ered onto planes by U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel, the news­pa­per reported.

Brought to Florida in U.S. planes by U.S. Marines, they were not received with com­pas­sion and human sol­i­dar­ity. Instead, as soon as they landed they were impris­oned to await depor­ta­tion for — lis­ten to this — lack­ing visas.

In a happy end­ing of sorts, after lan­guish­ing for more than two months in ICE jails, the Hait­ian earth­quake sur­vivors last Thurs­day were tem­porar­ily released — coin­ci­den­tally, the same day their story was made pub­lic. It’s unclear whether they will be allowed to remain in the U.S.

One is left to won­der what would have been their fate with­out media coverage.

“Rather than being wel­comed in the U. S. of A, and get­ting the refuge that they expected, they were detained for two months here at the Broward facil­ity,” said Cheryl Lit­tle, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Florida Immi­grant Advo­cacy Cen­ter.

Lit­tle noted that most of the Hait­ian detainees have fam­ily in the U.S. who are able to sup­port them.

“We were just scratch­ing our heads, hon­estly. We knew they couldn’t be deported under the new gov­ern­ment pol­icy, they didn’t have crim­i­nal back­grounds, and yet they were being detained with our tax dol­lars, Amer­i­can tax dollars.”

Incom­pe­tence or cal­lous­ness? Stu­pid­ity or racism? It’s hard to tell.

What is absolutely cer­tain is that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion can­not pre­tend to call on other nations to respect human rights while at the same time tol­er­at­ing the bla­tant dis­re­gard by its own fed­eral immi­gra­tion agency.

To be taken seri­ously, the admin­is­tra­tion must act quickly and dras­ti­cally to rein in ICE’s cow­boy men­tal­ity and force the agency to march in step with Pres­i­dent Obama’s stated priorities.

“When com­mu­ni­ties are ter­ror­ized by ICE immi­gra­tion raids, when nurs­ing moth­ers are torn from their babies, when chil­dren come home from school to find their par­ents miss­ing, when peo­ple are detained with­out access to legal coun­sel, when all that is hap­pen­ing, the sys­tem just isn’t work­ing, and we need to change it,” can­di­date Obama said with pas­sion and con­vic­tion dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial run.

Pres­i­dent Obama must not be allowed to for­get his own words.