Gov. Mitt Romney, leaving office, has just taken a modest step to protect the people of Massachusetts.

Romney signed an agreement with the feds to empower 30 state troopers—to be trained by the feds for five weeks—to determine if arrested crime suspects are illegal aliens. If so, the troopers could hold them on immigration violations. Here is how it would work.

If an MS-13 gang member were arrested for assault and battery, and the victim was too terrified to testify against a Mara Salvatrucha member, the state troopers could hold the alleged assailant, call in immigration authorities and have him deported.

The troopers would also be empowered to arrest and hold illegal aliens leaving prison, to ensure their deportation by the feds.

Why any Bay Stater would oppose having his cops authorized to rid his state of illegal aliens implicated in crimes escapes me.

But never underestimate the suicidal bent of a Bay State liberal. Recall: This is the commonwealth whose governor used to grant weekend prison "furloughs" to the likes of Willie Horton.

Deval Patrick, the incoming Democratic governor, thinks Romney has a "bad idea" because state troopers have "enough to do."

But Romney's plan does not force troopers to do anything. It empowers them. And what is more important for police to do than assure that convicted felons, who do not belong in this country, do not return to Boston, or that criminal suspects and gang members are sent back where they came from, rather than set loose in Springfield?

What the Romney plan challenges is the "sanctuary" policy many cities have adopted under pressure from ethnic lobbies. Under New York's policy, backed by Rudy Giuliani, five illegal aliens, several with long rap sheets, were still in the city in 2002 and able to kidnap and gang-rape a woman for three hours in the shadow of Shea Stadium.

Nine states have adopted versions of the Romney plan, where state or local police can assist U.S. immigration authorities in dealing with criminals and criminal suspects who are in the country illegally.

Resistance to this common-sense idea reveals how ingrained is the ideological hostility to any idea that might halt the flow of illegals into our country. For open-borders champions, the real criminals are those who wish to secure the border or reduce immigration to preserve the country they grew up in.

Anger has also surfaced over the raids on six meatpacking plants of Swift & Co. Of the 7,250 workers at the plants, 1,271—nearly 18 percent—are suspected illegal aliens.

According to The Washington Post, 100 have already been charged with various crimes, including identity theft. Both federal and company officials estimate that between 30 percent and 40 percent of all plant workers may have stolen or falsified identity documents. [ICE Sweep Was Largest Ever Against One Firm By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post, December 14, 2006]

In recent weeks, Swift discovered false or stolen documents for some 400 workers, who either quit or were fired. The folks at Swift apparently knew something was coming down. But while there has been a slowdown in production, Swift says it anticipates "no adverse long-term impacts." What does this tell us?

First, that the Bush propaganda that illegal aliens only take jobs Americans won't do is patently false. There is probably no industry in which illegal aliens are more heavily concentrated than meatpacking. Yet even at Swift, we are told, 60 percent to 70 percent of the workers are neither illegal aliens nor do they have phony IDs. They are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens forced to compete with illegals, and thereby denied the overtime work or higher pay to support their families.

Stepping back, consider the rampant criminality the feds unearthed by turning over a few rocks at Swift & Co. [Contact Swift & Co. ]

These illegal aliens had to break the law to get into our country. Many were probably assisted by human traffickers who rob the men of money and the women of much else. The illegal aliens then paid for forged or stolen documents provided by organized crime. They then are hired by companies that know they are here in violation of federal law and who wink and accept the phony IDs.

These companies are triple cheats. They cheat competitors by hiring illegal labor. They cheat the government of taxes. They cheat the community by passing on to citizens the costs in higher taxes of schools and social services for the illegals.

What we have here is a chain of corruption that contaminates everyone associated with it, including the politicians who refuse to enforce the law and who take the contributions of the corporations that give them these legal bribes for not enforcing the law.

A society that passes laws its leaders refuse to enforce, the violation of which is condoned by its corporate and media elites, is a society on the way down and on the way out.

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Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com.