A crowd of a hundred anti-immigration protesters gathered in a Southern California town to surround some buses carrying undocumented immigrant detainees, forcing the buses to turn around before the people inside – mothers and toddlers – could be processed at a border control facility.

Wrapping themselves in the American flag and chanting “USA!” as if it were a sporting event, some screamed, “Go home!” at the 140 detainees who were picked up by immigration authorities in Texas.  They were there at the invitation of town’s Mayor Alan Long, who said, “Murrieta expects our government to enforce our laws, including the deportation of illegal immigrants caught crossing our borders, not disperse them into our local communities.”

Of course, that was pure demagoguery.  Even Alan Long later acknowledged that the detainees would not have been processed and released out the back door into the community.  No problems were reported at any other facility – just the one where the mayor shot off his mouth with incorrect information.

As the all-white protest group’s blood boiled over, a singer named Lupillo Rivera who drove by and wanted to know what the ruckus was all about.  Rivera is an American citizen who is well known in Mexican Banda Music circles, but that didn’t matter to the protesters; they accused him of being an “illegal alien”.  He came back with friends, and they spat at him.

America’s southern border has seen a flood of Central American immigrants – including hoards of unaccompanied children – cross the border in recent weeks without legal permission.  There is a crisis of what to do with these people, how to care for them, and how to make sure they receive due process in the immigration system.  

As the satirical Wonkette Blog said:

“As Jesus said, when I was hungry, you screamed in my face and chanted ‘USA!’, when I was thirsty, you screamed in my face and chanted ‘USA!’, and when I was a child thousands of miles from her mother or father trying to escape a failed state, you said, “Who’s going to pay for them?”