On March 8, I wrote a post that said that although Blackwater was being pushed out of Potrero, California, by concerned residents, that the Blackwaterization of the border would continue. I didn’t know at the time that Blackwater was already in the process of securing a permit for a training site in Otay Mesa, San Diego County. The Otay Mesa facility is to be an indoor training center, housed in an industrial park right near the border. It will train about 48 students at a time, as opposed to the 300 in Potrero, which suggests to me that several other secretive sites are probably en route. I say secretive because the process in Otay Mesa was just that. Blackwater was granted the permit in lieu of public hearings, and the name on the permit application was for a Blackwater subcontractor, Raven Development Group. San Diego City Council President Scott Peters opposes the permit, saying, “Residents deserve to know when a facility like this is approved.”
The problems with having Blackwater at the border are legion. Blackwater is the symbol for the privatized component of the war in iraq. Blackwater symbolizes lawlessness and utter contempt for anyone who questions its mission.
For more on Blackwater, see this excellent video w/ Jeremy Scahill interview :
The last thing immigration control policy needs at the moment is more lawlessness.
