Back in July, a state of emergency was declared in southwest Michigan’s Kalamazoo County following an 800,000 gallon oil spill. At the time, Enbridge Energy, a subsidiary of Enbridge Inc., took complete responsibility, stating “[t]his is our mess. We’re going to clean it up.”

However, the company doesn’t want to take any responsibility for the illegal hiring and abuse of the undocumented cleanup employees who were hired by an Enbridge Energy subcontractor to work up to 100 hours a week in unsafe conditions. According to Enbridge, the company conveniently has nothing to do with the controversy since its contractor (Garner Environmental Services) hired another contractor (Hallmark Industrial) which in turn hired and abused the undocumented workers:

In the wake of the Messenger investigation, the firing of Hallmark and the detention of its workers, Enbridge Energy — the company repsonsible for the spill — has claimed no responsibility for the workers cleaning it up.

Last week, Enbridge officials said there was no official proof that the undocumented workers were in any way connected to the spill cleanup in Michigan. “This is an issue between law enforcement, Hallmark, and Garner,” said Terri Larson, Enbridge spokesperson. “There is no direct connection between Enbridge and Hallmark.”

While it’s true that Enbridge probably wasn’t directly involved in the hiring or managing of undocumented workers, that won’t necessarily exonerate the company. There is an abundance of businesses that have been caught knowingly employing the services of a subcontractors that hire and abuse cheap, undocumented labor. In fact, for many of these companies it’s simply part of a business model that allows them to maximize their profits by skirting immigration and labor laws. However, under the Obama administration, an increasing number of these companies are being held liable for the unlawful hiring practices of their subcontractors.

It doesn’t help that the Michigan Messenger — which broke the story — has also found that Enbridge’s own labor record “reveals a pattern of problems with worker safety including multiple worker deaths in recent years.” Earlier this year, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) charged Enbridge with failing to develop and implement safe work practices for workers exposed to hydrogen sulfide and a failure to provide required personal protection equipment. According to OSHA, these violations were committed “with intentional, knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or with plain indifference to employee safety and health.”

Rep. Mark Schauer (D-MI) has come out blasting Enbridge, stating, “It’s outrageous and disgusting that our local workers — including many who have hazmat training and certifications — have been cheated out of these opportunities to do this work.”

Meanwhile, those unauthorized workers who spent 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, cleaning up Enbridge’s “mess” in unsafe conditions may never see the fruits of their labor. Last week, a bus full of Hallmark workers on their way back to Texas to collect their pay was stopped by police. While some workers ran away, the majority of those detained were sent to a detention facility in Houston and will likely be deported.

Over the past few years, as comprehensive immigration reform has stalled, politicians have continued to put more boots on the ground at the border as part of a broader effort to solve the nation’s immigration problems via an enforcement-only approach. However, as the ranks of border patrol agents has ballooned, there has also been a troubling increase in reports of abuse and excessive force aimed at those who end up in their hands. The Los Angeles Times reports that “the Border Patrol is grappling with a spate of misconduct cases in its ranks, which have expanded from 4,000 agents in the early 1990s to 21,000 today.”

Over the last 18 months, five Border Patrol agents have been accused or convicted of sex crimes. One of those agents pleaded guilty earlier this year to raping a woman while off duty, and another is accused of sexually assaulting a migrant while her young children were nearby in a car. Border patrol agent Gamalier Reyes Rivera is jailed and awaiting trial on attempted murder charges in a hatchet attack that paralyzed a man. Agent Jesus Enrique Diaz Jr. is accused of torturing a 16-year-old drug smuggler. A couple months ago, Wonk Room also reported that an unarmed 15-year-old Mexican was shot and killed by a border patrol agent who had rocks thrown at him, though a poor-quality cellphone video suggested the boy was on the Mexican side of the border and pretty defenseless when he was shot. At the time, I also mentioned that a father of five U.S. born children recently died after being shot with a stun gun by a Customs and Border Protection officer at the San Ysidro border crossing as he resisted being deported.

Even the Customs and Border Protection claims it is “fully aware of and deeply concerned about arrests of our employees.” However, the Border Patrol does not publish information about how often or under what circumstances it uses force. Civil rights cases brought against border patrol officers “are extremely difficult, prosecutors say, because agents are loath to report peers and juries are reluctant to convict those standing guard along the country’s borders.”

This sort of misconduct is probably not the norm amongst the thousands of border patrol agents who honorably risk their lives to defend our borders. However, its repeated occurrence makes it hard to argue that these are simply “accidents” or isolated incidents. Many experts have identified the problem as being one of insufficient training. Tony Payan of the University of Texas at El Paso, told the Los Angeles Times, “[t]hey [border patrol] see themselves as a quasi-military body defending the country. Add to that the fact that they are expanding rapidly, and you have thousands of rookies who have very little experience.” Scholars, advocates, and watchdog groups have been echoing Payan’s concerns as far back as 2006. “This is not something where you can snap your fingers and have thousands go on the job,” said Deborah W. Meyers of the Migration Policy Institute. “It is a demanding job, and training is important and intense.”

There has also been one other disturbing trend within the Customs and Border Protection agency: a rise in suicides. Given that few of the officers left behind suicide notes, it’s impossible to say that what is causing some officers to kill themselves is related to what is driving the misconduct of others. However, the Associated Press suggested one explanation: boredom. Reporter Paul J. Weber claims that “stepped-up border security — including 600 miles of fence and an even larger ‘virtual’ fence that is monitored online — has reduced the number of illegal crossings, as has the economic hardship of the recession.” According to Weber, “the result is a job that went from thrilling to downright boring.” Though whether they’re bored or not, few would argue that that the political debate debate has made their job any less stressful.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, earlier this week General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, warned that the planned burning of the Quran by the extremist Dove World Outreach Center “could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.”

Now, Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of Redstate.com and CNN contributor, has responded to Petraeus’s warning to be respectful of Muslim sensitivities by excoriating the general. He writes that he thinks it is “bad form for the military to start applying pressure to influence the political activities…of American civilians” and notes that Petraeus “made no similar pronouncement about the activities of antiwar demonstrators who, at least arguably, caused American deaths.” He even goes as far as to say that Petraeus’s actions “teach the same lesson to both us and the Islamists that the Mohammed cartoon did” — that Western governments and elites will “fold like a cheap suit” to violent Islamists:

I think it is bad form for the military to start applying pressure to influence the political activities (and this is clearly a form of political speech) of American civilians. Petraeus is essentially attributing direct responsibility for American deaths to the activities of American citizens (and I hasten to point out that he made no similar public pronouncement about the activities of antiwar demonstrators who, at least arguably, caused American deaths by giving the jihadis reason to believe they could drive us out of Iraq given enough casualties). [...]

More specifically, Petraeus’s actions teach the same lesson to both us and the Islamists that the Mohammed cartoon did: Islamists learned if they are sufficiently violent Western governments and elites will fold like a cheap suit.

Erickson also writes that Petraeus’ actions taught us that “Islam, as practiced by large swaths of the [M]uslim world, is a violent religion that apparently can’t operate in tandem with a civil society.” He ends his screed by saying he does disagree with Dove pastor Terry Jones’s actions, but implies that Arabs are inherently violent, writing, “I would encourage this pastor to stand down — but I’m not going to wring my heads over it. If not this, there’ll just be something else causing riots in the ‘Arab Street.’ This is just today’s excuse.”

[/upda

Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA) has launched a new ad against his Republican opponent, State Rep. Austin Scott (R), that takes aim at Scott’s record on immigration.

The 30-second ad, which will begin airing on the airwaves this week, ominously warns that “times are hard, and illegal immigrants are putting more of a burden on taxpayers by using public services like hospitals and schools.” It continues by saying that “Austin Scott voted against penalizing illegal immigrants who tried to send money out of the country.” It notes that Scott said he had a “moral problem” making immigrants pay. It then asks, “Mr. Scott, what about the moral problem of illegal immigrants breaking the law?” Watch it:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway has located the bill the Marshall campaign is attacking Scott for opposing. HB 1238, the “Illegal Immigrant Fee Act,” would “have levied a 5 percent tax on cash wired out of the country by any individual who could not prove U.S. citizenship or legal residency.” The bill eventually passed by a 106-60 vote, and Scott was “one of the few Republican members to vote against it.”

Galloway finds this blurb from his paper detailing Scott’s opposition to passage of the bill at the time:

In a speech, Scott said that comprehensive immigration reform is needed, because of the impact illegal immigrants have on crime and public schools. But Scott said he believes that Rice’s bill would “tax people who are doing the best they can to provide for their families. I’ve got a moral problem with that.”

Marshall is wrong to claim that undocumented immigrants are a “burden” on public services and to attack Scott for proposing the only real solution to our broken immigration system: comprehensive immigration reform. It is simply a myth that undocumented immigrants take advantage of American public services without paying any taxes. A study by the National Council of La Raza released earlier this year estimates that undocumented immigrants “will pay, on average, approximately $80,000 more in taxes per capita than they use in government services” over the course of their working lifetimes. Additionally, it is estimated that undocumented immigrants contribute $7 billion a year into Social Security, money which they are ineligible to recover.

If Marshall is really seriously concerned about the economic effects of immigration, he should join Scott in supporting comprehensive immigration reform instead of supporting frivolous and punitive measures like HB 1238 that immiserate the lives of immigrants without getting to the root of the problem. A joint CAP/UCLA/Immigration Policy Center study released last year estimates that giving America’s undocumented workers a path to citizenship “would yield at least $1.5 trillion in cumulative U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years.”

This week, Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and Gen. William Caldwell, the training commander in Afghanistan, warned that Dove World Church’s “International Burn a Quran Day” on September 11 would put U.S. troops’ lives in danger and undermine NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. Despite their warnings, church pastor Terry Jones said his congregation would go ahead with the event.

Top officials in the Obama administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder have denounced Jones’ plans, but leading Republicans are refusing to comment. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported last night that he asked top GOPers — including President Bush, House Minority Leader John Boehner (OH), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), Sens. John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Jeff Sessions (AL), and Susan Collins (ME), Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Liz Cheney — if they would condemn Jones’ Quran burning in light of Petraeus’ remarks but none would offer any comment:

OLBERMANN: And so, today, Countdown asked several Republican politicians if they now, as they have in the past, urged Americans to listen to General Petraeus and support what he needs to win the hearts and minds of an Islamic country. … [We received] total silence today.

Watch it:

Olbermann is right, Republicans — including Cantor, Boehner, and McCain — have in the past demanded that lawmakers, administration officials and the American people listen to Petraeus.

But these same Republicans also recently disregarded Petraeus’ concern that “Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.” So it seems likely they will again ignore his warnings.

[/update]