Suffolk County Forces Homeless Immigrants into the Cold

Suffolk County in Long Island has a dark tradition of hate crimes and violence against Latino immigrants. The County government has long turned a blind eye, even fostering an atmosphere in which the color of your skin can get you attacked with a baseball bat or BB gun. Now, the town of Huntington has taken another, active step in the abuse, what a New York Times editorial deems "an exercise in needless cruelty": destroying a makeshift camp where homeless immigrants found shelter from the bitter New York cold.

Town officials had chainsaws rip apart all that was there, reducing to rubble what little these immigrants possessed.

In a bizarre twisting of logic, town officials tried to spin this as an act of compassion, driven by concern that the men might die from the freezing cold. And yet, the town provides no shelters for the homeless, and the county shelter bars undocumented immigrants. At the very least, let's call a spade a spade.

"No one is to blame, it seems, but the men who came without papers and sought shelter where they weren’t supposed to," the Times writes. "As for the possibility of other kinds of blame -- of homeowners and contractors who exploit and discard cheap immigrant labor, of politicians who feed a climate of resentment that has given Suffolk County a grim reputation for intolerance -- no one has owned up to any of it"

For those long, cold January nights, a local church has provided a warm bed for these displaced men. During the icy days, with the work that brought them to the area another casualty of the recession, these men can't afford to leave and have nowhere in town to go -- except back to the woods, where they once had some kind of home.

Photo credit: foxypar4