Backlash of Mayor Boughton's latest anti-immigrant policy is still spreading across the nation media and blogs.

The Huffington Post is the latest to lash out against the last honest man and link his rhetoric to other instances of anti-immigrant xenophobia such as those put on display in Hazelton PA and in Arizona.

Danbury, Connecticut Mayor Mark D. Boughton is just the latest elected official who wants to act locally to solve a national problem. If he has his way, Danbury police officers will be required to work with Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officials (ICE) to round up undocumented workers living in his city.

All across the country, local governments are stepping in where they feel the federal government has failed. Last year in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, local leaders passed the "Illegal Immigration Relief Act," which penalized businesses for hiring undocumented immigrants. Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona also signed a law requiring employers to ensure that all job candidates were legal residents. These efforts try to limit immigrant access to social services, housing, and employment. Supporters claim this is the only way they can stop immigrants from overusing public goods. Critics claim they are misguided, divisive, and ultimately ineffectual.

Our immigration system is clearly broken. After last summer's failed attempt at reform, I understand why people are frustrated. We need stronger borders, a functioning guest worker program, and a pathway to citizenship for people already here. We also need to face up to the fact that many communities could not function without immigrants and that most immigrants, documented or not, are law-abiding, hard-working individuals who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their children -- what generations of foreign-born Americans have always done.

Piecemeal efforts such as those proposed by Mayor Boughton are not only unfair, they are misguided. They cut off our nose to spite our face and blame immigrants for larger, more basic problems. What's really happening in a place like Danbury? The economy of this once-flourishing "hatting capital of the world" hasn't recovered from the industry's decline. And when the economy suffers, safety, education, and city services suffer as well.

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The economy is another arena in which the federal government has failed to act effectively. So, if citizens want to act locally in response, why not get at the real problem? Instead of spending precious local resources to penalize mostly hardworking individuals, why not direct them toward alleviating social problems that affect all of us? It costs a lot of money and time to raid factories. Why not use those same dollars to make health care more accessible and housing more affordable?

Again, these problems can't be solved entirely by local cities and towns. But it seems to me that Mayor Boughton has his priorities wrong. If he really wants to make Danbury better, act locally to ameliorate the true roots of what's bothering all of us and what is really at the heart of anti-immigrant sentiment.

The backlash continues...

The immigrant residents of this small city have been subjected to every injustice. Police regularly engage in racial profiling, making “driving while brown” the most common motor vehicle violation. Anti-immigrant groups parade their bigotry in the street and in the local media, receiving constant encouragement from Mayor Mark Boughton, who has made a name for himself with his attacks on immigrant communities. And over it all is the constant threat of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who in 2006 entrapped and detained 11 Latino day laborers here for the crime of wanting to work.

In the face of this relentless animosity, some immigrant families began moving out of Danbury. Many more felt powerless. Mayor Boughton then took his anti-immigrant policies one step further, announcing last fall that Danbury would authorize the police department to train with ICE agents so officers could work under ICE supervision, carrying out raids and enforcing federal immigration laws. After several contentious city council meetings, the matter was scheduled for a final vote on Feb. 6.

Previously, Boughton had rejected calls for participation in the so-called ICE ACCESS program, claiming that immigration enforcement was a matter for the federal government. The flip-flop reflected his willingness to cater to the most reactionary and bigoted elements. It also reflected his belief that the immigrant community in Danbury was firmly under control.

In January, Boughton may have begun to see his mistake. The Brazilian and Ecuadorian communities hosted meetings numbering in the hundreds, something that had never happened before. But conventional wisdom said that no more than a few hundred people—both pro- and anti-immigrant—would show up for the city council meeting.

On Feb. 6, Main Street resembled a ghost town: shops were closed in solidarity with the immigrant community and most were papered over with hundreds of pink flyers opposing the ICE ACCESS proposal. At evening, crowds began to swell around City Hall.

Long before the city council meeting was scheduled to begin the crowd numbered in the hundreds, creating a sense of enthusiasm and militancy as people chanted, waved pink flyers and sang. The numbers continued to grow until more than three thousand people forced the police to shut down the street to accommodate the protest.

Local anti-immigrant forces showed their true colors by turning out less than a half-dozen people and ridiculously declaring that the thousands of protesters were actually “bussed in” from outside the city.

The Feb. 6 demonstration is one of the largest to occur in decades in this town of only 75,000 people. Mayor Boughton has dropped one drop of water too many into the glass and it has begun to overflow.

Funny what happens when the media has more information on what's happening in Danbury besides the mayor's soundbites...