Folks in the larger blogosphere have started to pick up on what happened to Juana Villegas DeLaPaz (see here, here, here, etc.) thanks to the hard work of Tim Chavez.
I want to point out one thing:
Villegas DeLaPaz was arrested, incarcerated and forced to go through labor under armed guard handcuffed to by her wrist and ankle to a hospital bed. When she arrived at the hospital, the nurse asked the accompanying officer to step outside while Villegas DeLaPaz changed into her hospital gown – he refused, forcing Villegas DeLaPaz to unclothe before him. Then she was shackled on her legs whenever she went to the bathroom. The nurse asked that the shackles be removed because she wanted Villegas DeLaPaz to be able to clean up after childbirth and do other hygiene to prevent infection. Again, the attending officer refused. Her newborn was taken from her and did not receive needed breast milk for several days. She was re-jailed and denied a breast pump to express her milk. Nurses attending her were crying. She could not sleep in the jail because of the intense pain from her swollen breasts. She was not allowed to call her family so her husband could be with her for the birth. [Emphasis mine.]
Which is what I pointed out earlier: People who witness first-hand how we treat the undocumented people who live with us hate it. They find it unjust. And they do not recognize any supposed benefit to themselves outweighing the suffering of the people, like Ms. Villegas DeLaPaz, who bear the brunt of this mess.
It’s funny–not funny ha ha, but funny strange–how it is that we’ve developed a program that is designed to inflict suffering on people supposedly by demand of the people of America, and yet, when ordinary Americans witness this program, they are appalled. They stand against it. They cry. They need therapy to deal with seeing it in action.
We’re told that this is what most Americans want. But most Americans, when confronted with the reality of it, the suffering of a woman like Villegas DeLaPaz, do not want that.
And so we are invited not to look. We are invited to assume that everything is okay, that there are oversights, that these are anomolies.
America, this is exactly how the system is designed.
It is not an anomoly. It is not something that will never happen again.
This is what is supposed to happen.
This is it.
And if you don’t like it, you have to stand against it.
You.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Somebody once said, “I’m too lazy to read the law and consider how it might apply to me before I begin just fuck, fuck, fucking my life away willy-nilly, even though I at any moment could read the law and consider how it applies to my life”
You say arrest, incarcerated, blah, blah, blah. I hear
the State of TennesseeI just paid for an anchor baby.Tough shit as they say. And by “they”, I mean you. Own it.
I suggest that everyone read Milton Mayer’s “They Thought They Were Free.”
After you do, you’ll understand why the ‘sentiments’ expressed by the previous commenter in this thread should not be coddled or treated with respect. Totalitarianism– the kind that kills millions– isn’t made up of magical tyrants who bend nations to their will. No, it is made up of pathetic little cowards like the character Brian (who I hope is a decent human being doing a good impression of a worthless piece of shit).
Brian, if you aren’t putting us on, then I have only one hope for the desperately dark future to which you and your kind are driving our erstwhile Republic. I hope I live long enough to see the misery and anguish that you and your fucked up kind are cheerleading blow back upon you with a vengeance.
Own that.
No, wait, Church Secretary! I have seen the light. Brian is absolutely right. Once someone does one thing wrong, they then give up their rights in all other matters. Demanding that men be responsible for the children they father is absolutely the same thing as making a woman strip naked in front of strangers and be shackled into stirrups while she gives birth because she doesn’t have a driver’s license.
Maybe Brian will come back and explain to us how using a woman’s pregnancy in order to heap more suffering onto her and his disdain for those most helpless of American citizens–babies–is consistant with his pro-life views.
And then I, too, can feel just fine about using pregnancy as a way to punish women.
Just relax, Church Secretary, and let the bullshit just wash over you. It makes it so much easier to swallow that way.
(On a somewhat unrelated note, you have to admit, though, CS, that he must at least score some points for making the furthest leap from here to “what about the menz?!” of any commenter in the history of the internet, don’t you think?)
What’s that rule about being the first one to make a comparison to Nazis?
Rereading the post from that link above, my favorite comment is this one from Sarcastro:
Please write another post about illegal immigration while you are swinging your Read The Fucking Law baton.
Yes, Exador, I think we’ve already established that many folks cannot distiguish between the undo burden of supporting your own children and terrorizing birthing women because you caught them driving without a license.
But allow me to point out that, except for the fact that both things at least tangentially concern children, they really have nothing in common.
Something tells me that if all of you, Villegas included, had more practice [doing some stuff, you’d be happier].
Any church that would have that dumb [body part] as their secretary needs to have it’s tax exempt status revoked. You can always forgive me though.
Me? I’m not big on forgiveness. So fuck you.
Anyway. [Some other crap].
As far as me being a totalitarian, I [take this opportunity to insult you women again]. This is the new Liberation Totalitarianism. She is free to go at any time.
RE: My decency – I don’t suffer fools gladly. Villegas knew she was breaking the law (the letter of which is very important to some people as long as you’re fucking over an innocent man because of it).
When I go to another country, I know that I can’t stay indefinitely, get a job there, drunk drive over the citizenry, etc.
She snuck back into this country after being deported once. She knew the law and she broke it repeatedly. That’s the law and we’ve seen your feelings on The Law ™.
But other than that, on with your passion play about the poor, poor suffering that she brought on herself.
Let a mother’s breasts split from unsuckled milk, let blood and milk mingle and drip until the jail floor is slick. If you’re lucky, Brian, maybe she’ll crack a nipple; better yet, maybe she’ll hemorrhage or develop pueperal fever and die like women denied immediate post-delivery care sometimes do. Hell, maybe you’ll hit the jackpot and there will be a Lynndie England among her guards who will take trophy photos and post them on the Internet so you can see “justice” in action. Then you can really get what you paid for — some real live video of naked bleeding engorged women of color.
Sadistic motherfucker.
Wow, nice hyperbole there, bridgett. The only problem is that none of that happened here.
She had the kid. The kid was immediately given to its father.
She was released a day and a half after leaving the hospital.
Maybe Brian will come back and explain to us how using a woman’s pregnancy in order to heap more suffering onto her and his disdain for those most helpless of American citizens–babies–is consistant with his pro-life views.
You have to remember B. “Pro-life” applies only to the fetus. Once the it’s born, they don’t care (or if they do, then it’s in open hostility as displayed here).
Brian and Exador, are you arguing that once something is put into law, it is automatically morally right? Does the crime of coming here illegally warrant a sentence of jailtime AND extreme risk of health and life for both oneself AND one’s children. Seems to be the sentence doesn’t match the crime. You can argue that one should follow the law or accept the consequences all you want but if we’re drawing and quartering jay walkers, it seems to me that people have the right to be upset.
The only problem is that none of that happened here.
So when do you change the law? Before such an event happens or afterward (or do you think such a thing is “justice” as it is)?
Something tells me that if all of you, Villegas included, had more practice swallowing that she wouldn’t be in this mess.
I can’t believe that anyone is bothering to respond to someone who can write a sentence like this.
Yes, but Exador…Brian was concerned only with how far the law could be stretched, not the law itself. How far is he willing to pervert the word “detain”? Is all that enough? Or does he want to sell her humiliation on pay-per-view to offset his costs? Would that be within his extra-super-generous reading of the law too? You see, he could care less about the law (or what it actually says) as long as he gets to enjoy punishing cunts who don’t swallow. Don’t waste time defending this worthless excuse for a man.
And as far as the “that didn’t happen,” read the damn post. She was denied hygienic care and a breast pump. Your robust experience as a post-partum mother doesn’t really qualify you to speak about what happens to a woman’s body in the 24 hours following birth, but let me tell you what that means. If you don’t nurse regularly (or in her case, if you’re denied a breast pump), your boobs swell up to triple-E size. Engorged breasts are not sexy. They are fevered to the touch and painful as hell. It’s horrible to wear clothes. Milk leaks out of you like someone’s turned a faucet and you are wet from your chest to your feet with milk. Your breasts are so tight that when you do nurse, your baby has real trouble latching on. The pressure of a baby’s mouth desperately trying to get milk and clamping down makes your nipples bleed and you have to use your tits every two hours to feed, so it’s like having someone brand you on the breast every two hours for the next two weeks while your nipple heals. If you get a breast infection from it, the pain during nursing can be far worse than labor. Lochia flow is the mother of all periods. Immediately post-partum, you’re packed up with a wad of cotton about the size of a man’s fist that you have to keep in for a couple of hours and then you have to be able to take it out or you will get an infection. Once that is out, you feel like you’re bleeding to death. You bleed and bleed and bleed and you can’t wear a tampon; blood goes everywhere. You have to have the regular ability to wash out your wounds or you will get a life-threatening infection. This is not theoretical. This is what happens when a woman gives birth in OPTIMAL conditions, not shackled to a bed and denied care in a damn hospital.
Jesus Christ, Brian, now might be the time to search out some different porn here on the internet. In real life “I hate you so fucking much, you dumb cunt. But please, oh, god, please, please, please, suck my dick, even just a little” isn’t really that effective.
But, hey, I’m flattered you’d like me to see you naked.
Thanks Bridgett. I’ll pass that long to Mrs S, in case she gets any maternal instincts kicking in.
W, I don’t think that making something into law makes it morally right, but I think that when you knowingly break a law, you understand that there’s a possibility that you will get caught and punished.
Which law are you anxious to change? The law against illegal immigration, or the law against driving without a license or insurance?
Are pregnant women allowed to break the law now? How far along do they have to be?
Exador’s “which law” question is a good one.
Instead of answering it, however, I’ll pose another one: what constraints are we under (or should we impose upon ourselves) as Nashvillians/Tennesseans/Americans in how we write and design our laws? Are there any? Or are we in a society in which we are able to pass laws, so therefore it is entirely up to our discretion how we punish the violators of such laws?
I don’t think we live in such a boundary-less society. We live in (at least in regard to the laws that apply to voters) a society in which voters try to make sure that the laws that apply to them are written and/or enforced within certain guidelines of fairness, decency, proportionality, effectiveness, etc.
For example, see the reaction to the severe fines imposed on speeders in Virginia:
http://tinyurl.com/virginiaspeeding
Also, wasn’t there a spirited reaction of the American public to the teenager who was almost caned a few years ago in Singapore?
Here in the U.S., those who can’t vote, well, the laws that apply to them are not under the same constraints of fairness, decency, proportionality, effectiveness, etc. – because the people who feel the distorted effects of those laws can’t vote. It’s up to people who are aware of such distorted effects to speak up and vote for a change in how those laws are designed.
Before we get to specifics about this situation, I have a question for Exador: if we have laws that in some way have no relationship to fairness, decency, proportionality, effectiveness, etc., and they apply to people who can’t vote, is that a problem?
Maybe that’s a problem for you, but you don’t think that the specific case highlighted by this post is an example. But if that isn’t a problem for you, we need to have a discussion on a much deeper level.
All people should be treated with basic human dignity when they are arrested. How’s that for a baseline? Since when does “being caught and punished” include being denied appropriate and timely medical care? And here I thought “detain” meant loss of liberty of movement that comes with being in police custody.
Yep, having a child isn’t all talcum powder and teddy bears. I am good with one, thanks.
Felons also can’t vote. (often)
Children can’t vote.
I fail to see your point, other than to try to get me to buy into some loaded, hypothetical question.
Oh, Exador, come on. You do, too, see his point. A. That we as a society all the time make decisions on whether the punishment fits the crime and whether we treat people as bad as we can just because we can. And B. that we have an obligation to try to protect the most powerless among us.
Now, discuss or don’t, but don’t play stupid.
Proportionality of punishment is a question for citizens. You are a citizen-voter (though admittedly, you’re not a poster boy for the Law and Order Brigade). I don’t see how asking a question about what citizens think is the legitimate use of force towards non-voting residents is either loaded or hypothetical. That’s a responsibility of citizenship and a fairly basic one.
Don’t get sloppy and make her a felon who merits the punishment that her crime dictates. She wasn’t convicted of anything prior to her mistreatment and so the whole “break the law and you’re going to get punished” thing is a nonstarter. She was in custody after an arrest but prior to hearing. In the US, we use judges to decide guilt and innocence — not some jumped-up One Bullet Barney on traffic duty.
Exador:
1) Same topic in regard to felons here:
http://politics.nashvillepost.com/2008/04/27/why-are-so-many-americans-in-prison/
2) As recently as June 29 you seemed to take the position that there are indeed boundaries to how we can respond to lawbreaking:
http://monosyllabic-pedantry.blogspot.com/2008/06/canadian-maddness.html
Whoa. Slow down ladies. I didn’t call her anything. The question related to who can and can not vote. Funny, you didn’t accuse me of calling her a child.
Secondly, I’m not cheerleading for what she went through. I”m sure it sucked.
My main point from these many threads has only been that
1) If you are knowingly breaking a law, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get caught, and are made a prisoner.
2) Once you’re a prisoner, you’re nothing as far as the guards are concerned.
You can argue for ways to improve that, but that’s the way it is.
That, sprinkled with my usual, colorful commentary.
Exador, I think you were responding to Dolphin instead of me up there at 9:52.
Let’s address this a different way. Does the punishment fit the crime? (I realize some people here don’t think that crime is the right word, but let’s use it anyway for the sake of convenience.)
Then there’s the matter of cruel and unusual punishment. Bridgett’s post wasn’t hypberbole. That does happen to a woman’s body post-natal. Just like a water heater without a outtake pipe. Plus she wasn’t allowed to see her baby that she carried for nine months and then spent hours pushing out of her body. That’s damn near the ultimate punishment for a new mother. Not to mention the punishment to the newborn baby who hasn’t committed any illegalities.
You think she broke the law and shouldn’t be here. Fine, send her home. Whatever. But it seems like a little more common decency was called for on the part of the sherriff’s office. I certainly don’t like the idea of paying some deputy to sit around and watch some poor lady try to clean up afterbirth.
Have you and Brian drafted your complaint letters to the Davidson County Sheriff’s office for eventually letting her go? You can look up their address here. http://www.nashville-sheriff.net/index.asp
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Be careful where you point the Read The Fucking Law Baton.
Also from the previous thread referenced above:
There’s a world of difference between trying to do your best to follow the law and not being able to, because the deck is stacked against you, and trying to do your best to get out of following the law because your feelings are hurt. Aunt B.
The cold serendipity of this post coming to pass is so thick it has frozen the pond down by the old mill and all of us kids are going skating!
You’re late to the party, Sarcastro. Brian has already pointed his Red Fucking Baton at us and asked us to suck it. You waving yours around just feels like overkill at this point.
p.s. I have Charlotte Park questions for you. Email me.
Sorry, I was busy smuggling Gringo retirees over the border in order to take up all the laying around drinking all day jobs in the greater Guadalajara area.
Brian has a Baton Rouge?
Why can’t I have a laying around drinking all day job? That’s what I want to know.
Well, he’s got a baton of some color. I don’t know what. But, considering that he’s reduced to begging women he hates to put it in our mouthes, I think we can guess what color his balls are.
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Why can’t I have a laying around drinking all day job?
You don’t? I guess it just seems that way lately.
If you take the laying around drinking all day job, then who will fill the sitting around blogging all day from work job?
The pigtail pulling never gets old.
Freshly back from vacation, all I have to offer is one grand old fashioned ass-kicking if I am anywhere near Brian in the future. Yeah, I know its juvenile, but if there was EVER a cowardly prick on the internet that has it coming, its that little POS.
Mack, I’m glad you’ve got the fire in you to kick his ass because after reading his comment, all I could do was have a good cry.
all I could do was have a good cry.
Never let him know he affected you. He feeds on that, like a parasite.
Shoot me an e-mail some time Mack and we can work it out.
There’s a boxing gym on 8th in the Historic Porn District.
We could call it the Thrilla with Vanilla con Leche.
Honky con carne’
Sorry, that’s the best I could come up with.
Maybe we could have it in the church parking lot down the street from the old lady that one of Mack’s comrades murdered in Bellevue.
Come on guys, for every dumb whore who gets pregnant in America there’s a case like this one too that you never seem to care about.
Clearly the only way to keep these dumb whores’ murder inclined children from ever being born is to make abortions widely available and affordable.
C’mon, y’all. Stop talking about Brian’s momma that way. She can’t help it if she’s dumb.
Why y’all feeding the troll?
Let’s get off momma’s bridgett – after all, I just got off yours.
Who can turn down such a bargain though?
All right, really. Enough.
Brian, here’s the deal. I don’t read Six Meat Buffet. So, if I’m not blogging about something y’all are blogging about over there, it’s no big mystery. Why would I ever in any way indicate that I read and thought it was a good use of my time to read a bunch of folks who clearly hate me?
Second, it’s completely and utterly stupid to draw some arbitrary line around a group of people and say “Oh, because everyone who falls inside this arbitrary circle, which I defined, meets these criteria, I can then hold them responsible for anything anyone might do who meets the criteria I’ve outlined.”
I could point out that the vast majority of people who are sitting in prison have dicks and that the vast majority of people who commit crimes have dicks, shoot, that even the vast majority of people who sneak in this country have dicks and that, therefore, we ought to just do away with everyone who has dicks–problem solved, crimes reduced!
Except that that’s pretty fucking stupid, too.
I mean, seriously, it can’t be some great mystery to you, upon rereading this thread, why I’m not searching out ways to align myself with you. Come on, you’re smarter than that.
I’m not asking for liberals to align themselves with me. I brought up your words regarding reading and following the law and put it to you as to why it does not apply in this situation.
No cursing, no personal insults, you know – my usual operating procedure. Confrontational, but not overly insulting. Also per standard procedure, some braindead leftard immediately jumps in calling me totalitarian, tyrant, fucked up piece of shit, blah, blah, blah.
I respond in kind. I’m a bad guy and a parasite and need to have my ass kicked – rah, rah, rah.
I’m saying for every case where you want to see overkill in the recent application of illegal immigration laws that I can point to an even worse instance where ignoring the laws has led to suffering far greater than the case of Villegas. The rape and murder of 74-year old Mary Sadler by Ivan Moreno being a prime example. If he was not here, she would still be alive caring for her Alzheimer’s stricken husband.
You want to stand up for women? Stand up for that one. The indignity she suffered at Moreno’s hands far outweights Villegas’ suffering at the hand of the DCSO.
You want to say “no one is illegal” and dehumanize anyone who thinks that we need control over who is let in this country by applying the specific to the general.
There are reasons why the laws need to be enforced and it’s not because I’m indifferent to the plight of honest people trying to make a living for themselves.
No cursing, no personal insults, you know – my usual operating procedure. Confrontational, but not overly insulting.
Wow, simply wow. Have we really gotten to the point in political discourse where vulgur statements about women needing to give men oral sex, using phrases like “cunt,” “bitch” and “fuck you” and calling names like “braindead leftard” are no longer considered to be “overly insulting?”
I blame network “news” which has been reduced to a bunch of talking heads shouting at each other.
Brian, everyone here can read for themselves what you wrote. The term “anchor baby” is an insult. Then, fine, the Church Secretary responds and I respond and Exador takes your side and you come back with–and I quote–
Where the fuck did you think this conversation was going to go after that?
You really thought you could tell me that if I just sucked a few more dicks, that poor woman wouldn’t be in that jam and it wouldn’t upset people? Me, especially?
It doesn’t even make sense as an insult except to allow you to get some use out of your he-man woman-hating vocabulary.
But what really pissed me off is that you put me in a jam and you know it. I don’t, as a matter of policy, delete comments. Which means that now, on this post that makes what I believe is an important point, I’ve got this giant turd of a comment just hanging there peppered with slurs scattershot across it in hopes you can hit something and make it stick.
Which means that we aren’t talking about the point I raised or even the point you raised initially, but now spending all this time with everyone trying to get their digs in at each other so that we can all reassure ourselves that we’re not bothered by the others’ asshole behavior and to prove it, we’re going to toss grenades right back.
Meanwhile, I’m getting emails about how vile your comment was and how uncomfortable it made people and why don’t I just ban you blah blah blah and I fretted over this all week until it dawned on me.
That’s your point.
You came looking for a fight and when you couldn’t get the fight you wanted, you shit in my pool.
And I have to stare at it every time I come back here. Thanks for nothing.
That first comment was not looking for a fight. It was looking for a rationalization how it’s ok to fuck men over by the letter of the law but it’s not okay to follow the letter when you all are crying over spilled milk.
You want to zoom in on anchor baby because it allows you a convenient escape from being a total hypocrite.
More power to you. This is your show. Delete it.
Yeah, guess what, Brian. Here in the real world, people hold seemingly contradictory ideas. It’s called being a human being. Much like how you run around being all “pro-life” but not when it comes to protecting the life and well-being of DeLaPaz’s kid.
But let’s do continue to argue that somehow I’m a hypocrite for chastising folks who abandon their children while at the same time praising and supporting a woman who’s willing to risk everything to give her children a decent shot at life. Maybe you can insinuate again that I’m a whore who’s cheating you out of a blowjob. That’ll be good fun.
People can read what I wrote and decide for themselves what kind of person I am and people are more than welcome to read what you wrote and decide what kind of person you are.
And fuck it anyway. With my luck, Jesus’ General reads this, decides I’m coddling you or agreeing with your point of view and he’ll run me out of town. So you’ll still be able to chalk it up as a win in your column.
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