We’ve had periodic stories in The Journal News about day laborer encampments in the woods around Brewster and Southeast — immigrant men living outdoors with campfires, tents, food and toiletry supplies. The latest story had several strange twists. Assemblyman Greg Ball led a media tour of a camp in Southeast on Friday. His office advised one of our reporters to “please wear boots, as their (sic) is human waste, etc.” We did not attend, but a News12 reporter interviewed the men. Ball says he tried to chat in Spanish and told the men that his best friend was from Guatemala City. He issued a press release decrying exploitation of such workers.

Shortly thereafter, the men were arrested by the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, charged with trespass and questioned by ICE.

Some in Southeast were pleased to hear about another camp being shut down, with its hazards of fire and death from exposure. But the publicity stunt did not sit well with immigrant advocates. Pat Young wrote a blog entry exploring the ironies.

While Ball assumes a Dickensian pose of exposing the presumed exploitation of immigrants, his only solution to their precarious situation is to remove their meager possessions and deport them. But of course, Assemblyman Ball’s purpose is not to help the downtrodden, but to join in their exploitation, not for financial gain but for political advantage.

Yee and Supervisor Michael Rights were part of the “Save Our Southeast” ticket whose political campaigns focused on illegal immigration — circulating mug shots of Hispanic criminal suspects and claiming (without proof) that the violent MS13 gang had come to town.

The whole encampment drama seems to play out many elements of the immigration debate. Poverty, exploitation, local outrage, federal inaction, and lots of politics.

Ball is considering a run for Congress, and changed his tune recently when discussing federal immigration policy. At the local level, he’s for cracking down further on illegal immigrants. At the federal level, he supports a legalization plan for the undocumented. I asked whether legalization should happen in concert with comprehensive reform or, as Sen. McCain had proposed, only after the southern border is more heavily secured. He described a position more like President Obama’s.

We absolutely need to secure the border, but we can contemporaneously open our doors to legal immigrants while cracking down on the black-market economy and inviting those illegal aliens who are currently within our borders to become American citizens, pay taxes and learn the language. All that can and should be done as a national priority, immediately.

Perhaps part of the confusion comes from his involvement with State Legislators for Legal Immigration, which opposes amnesty, birthright citizenship and the “Illegal Alien Invasion.”