redblueamerica.com

So, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is arresting illegal immigrants trying to leave the country. Let the mockery begin? Tempting as that may be, the sweeps of departing travellers make sense, which explains why all the right people are upset about them.

According to the Los Angeles Times, border enforcement agents have been setting up random checkpoints along Interstate 5 near the San-Diego-Tijuana crossing. Agents are boarding buses and detaining anyone who doesn't have proper documents.

Vincent Bond, an agency spokesman, said departing immigrants are fair targets. "If our officers come upon people who are here illegally . . . regardless of whether they're leaving the country, we detain them, make a record of the fact they were here illegally and return them to Mexico," Bond said.

So the goal is to catch and document "the undocumented" -- for security and enforcement purposes. If the Border Patrol catches the illegal alien again, he's already in the system. And the sweeps could prove useful for disrupting drug trafficking and money laundering.

The Times story quotes Frank Sharry of America's Voice, a new pro-immigration "reform" group, and former director of the National Immigration Forum, an open-borders advocacy group with backing from the Ford Foundation, among others. ""The policies of the Bush administration are designed to make life so difficult for immigrants in the U.S. illegally that they're forced to leave. . . . Now they're arresting people who they are actually driving out of the country. . . . Unbelievable." ( Coincidentally, the left-leaning Firedoglake blog posted an illuminating interview with Sharry over the weekend about his ideas for "comprehensive immigration reform." If the Republicans in Congress really think and speak the way Sharry says, we've got big problems.) Another liberal immigration expert, UC San Diego political scientist Wayne Cornelius, calls the sweeps "bizarre." And Enrique Morones of Border Angels says the checkpoints could discourage illegal aliens from returning home.

Well, no, the checkpoints are not really unbelievable or particularly bizarre. First, the feds are not arresting the illegal immigrants. They're briefly detaining them and deporting them. Unless they have serious criminal records or numerous immigration violations, most are returned to Mexico within a few hours. As for discouraging illegal immigrants from going home, do employer raids discourage illegal immigrants from going to work?

In other words, the border patrol is actually doing its job, albeit in an unorthodox and unexpected way. Good for them.