Sometimes you’ve got to wonder how the federal government came up with the alphabet soup of names it has for its agencies.

There are the old favorites of course: FBI, CIA and IRS, whose letters are pronounced individually.

But one of the newest agencies on the block, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is known by an acronym that is pronounced, like FEMA, as a word.

ICE was created in 2003 from the law-enforcement wings of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and U.S. Customs Service, according to its website.

Its purpose is to ensure the security of the nation’s border, transportation, economic and transportation infrastructure, and it has the authority to enforce more than 400 federal statutes. So it could have been called anything.

But I can almost picture a team of federal bureaucrats in a windowless office somewhere in Washington tasked with coming up with a name and catchy acronym for what would become the Department of Homeland Security’s largest investigative wing:

"How about ICE?" one of them suggests. "You know, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Heads turn.

"Yeah, that’s it! Were going to put these illegal immigrants on ICE!" another quips, with enthusiastic inflection.

So it happens, ICE also has a motto: Integrity, Courage and Excellence.

I wonder how they thought of that.

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ICE led a raid Tuesday that netted 31 suspected illegal immigrants working at a Jewish summer camp in Gilboa.

Tipped off by a concerned local resident, the Schoharie County Sheriff’s Department initiated the investigation, which later revealed 26 of the suspects were living at The Belvedere Country Inn in Stamford. Five were staying at the camp.

Residents who live near the Belvedere, at least those who even knew there were suspected illegal immigrants there, said the men kept a low profile.

One neighbor, who didn’t wish to be identified, said she feels sorry for such workers and called them "pawns" of employers who are taking advantage of the poverty in their home countries.

But she still said the workers they knew they were doing something wrong.

America is a nation of immigrants, she said, but they have a duty to get into this country legally.

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Oorah Inc. is a New Jersey-based Jewish organization that owns and operates the camp raided by ICE.

The word Oorah means "awaken," according to the group’s website, which includes this mission statement: "Oorah Inc. is an international organization whose primary concern is providing for the physical and spiritual needs of distressed and immigrant youth and their families. Oorah provides basic food staples, nutritional products, clothing, household items, furnishings and reduced utility rates, among other things, to help ease the financial burdens of these families."

A director of Oorah said he did not know any of the 31 workers were illegal and said they were all employed by some of the five to 10 sub-contractors renovating the camp.

Authorities have not released the names of the subcontractors and have only said they are believed to be mostly from New Jersey.

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I like old stuff.

There’s something about holding a tool, a book, an antique rifle or any other object that has been handled countless times through the years by who knows who.

Every object has a story, but many times those stories are lost to history.

While at Hartwick College’s Pine Lake campus in Davenport last month, I visited a dig at the archeological field school run by professors from Hartwick College and the State University College at Oneonta.

Teaching assistant Nicole Thorn, a 2005 SUCO graduate and graduate student at the State University at Albany, handed me a recently discovered stone point she said was probably used as a knife. Aside from the students, I was probably the first person to handle the point in a few thousand years.

Who were those people who camped out on the bank of Charlotte Creek, and what were they like?

The one thing I do know is they didn’t need a work visa to come here.

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Staff Writer Jake Palmateer covers Oneonta government and police and fire departments.