Border control, or out of control?

A recent federal immigration raid in Arkadelphia, Arkansas resulted in the immediate deportation of 107 undocumented workers at a poultry plant, leaving around 30 young children -- most American citizens by birth -- without their parents.

State officials, including Gov. Mike Huckabee, have condemned this action as unnecessarily extreme and insensitive. Arkansas News Bureau columnist John Brummett offers some common sense in his analysis of the incident:

So, the feds convicted a woman for selling stolen identities to illegal immigrants who'd come from Mexico to handle poultry entrails for little more than the minimum wage at an Arkadelphia plant. It's better than no job at all, which is what these Mexicans had at home.

The woman stole people's identities. She reaped illicit profit. I say throw the book at her.

Just don't round up all the 119 gainfully employed illegal immigrants in Arkadelphia trying to make a better life for themselves and relying on the woman's fraudulent documentation.

It's a simple principle with established precedent: Prosecute the dealer; spare and rehabilitate the individual user.

[. . .]

If we want to enforce the immigration law, the place to do it is the border, not the poultry plant. If we want to make the country safer, we'll have to separate mass murderers from their caves, not hard workers from their jobs and children from their parents.