Well, Boo Hoo

Seated in the cabin was a 22-year-old New York City resident plucked from his bed in Queens who had just opened his own cell-phone store on the Upper West Side and thought he was legal until agents raided his family's home before dawn last winter.

A few rows away sat Mohammad Akbar, 48, who had befriended beat cops and other customers over coffee at the 7-Eleven where he worked in suburban Philadelphia. He submitted in April to the administration's "special registration" for men from Muslim countries, only to be shackled before the afternoon was out.

Not far from him was a supervisor of car-wash workers who was caught dozing in his car behind a Schaumburg office complex. Authorities detained him on a nearly 8-year-old deportation order. He's now jobless in Pakistan while the wife he left behind in a suburban apartment struggles to pay the bills....

Nearby, a teenager carried a cell phone to alert his mother the moment his older brother was home safely. It was the brother's string of jobs at Baltimore gas stations that had been the family's lifeline.

"[He] was our only hope," the young man said. "Now they're sending him back, so God knows what will happen."....

Those deported through the campaign, he predicted, will say: "We were a good ambassador to this country. We worked hard. We paid our taxes. We committed no crimes. And they kicked us out."....

All had been in the U.S. illegally (emphasis mine)

The Chicago Tribune is apparently deciding to run one of those long series in which they essentially bemoan the fact that people breaking the laws got caught and had to pay the price.

I feel bad for the genuinely good guys here that got deported for visa violations. Those who had jobs and were trying to become productive members of society should have the right to immediately reapply for their visa and their efforts in the US should be rewarded with an easier path to getting their visas. They have already proven that they aren't freeloaders and they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

That does not, however, excuse them from consequence from violating the law in the first place. They broke it, pure and simple, and for their violation, the law requires deportation. It may be unfortunate; it may be inconvenient, but it is what has to happen.

The Trib is making it sound as though there is some sinister dirty dealing going on here. They make it sound like Bush and Ashcroft got together to figure out the easiest way to deport the greatest number of Muslims.

I'm really sorry that the Tribune writers seem to have such a great problem with our laws being enforced. Is the enforcement targeted? In this case, yes. But it is also being done in response to a perceived national security threat. If a few hundred illegals get deported earlier than they might otherwise be, well that's just too bad. It may not be karmic justice, but that's not the goal of our legal system. We seek legal justice. That's a big difference.

In my opinion, if the Tribune wanted to provide these men with a real service instead of simply trying to spread an anti-Bush agenda, then they would be looking at ways to expedite the return of the gainfully employed deportees.

But this is not a problem solving article or series. It is merely a political hit piece disguised as news.

About the only thing they were missing was the "Oh, the humanity!" statement.