Enough is enough.
The United States Immigration and Enforcement Agency, better known as ICE, is out of control. It is invading communities, wielding military-style gear, donning facemasks, for crying out loud, like they have something to hide, and spreading terror, all in the name of enforcing immigration law. In the process its officers, seemingly ill-trained, have busted into homes without judicial warrants, smashed car windows and dragged drivers into the street and rousted children from their beds at night separating them from their parents.
Oh, and shot people.
All of this, and so much more, is being performed under the aegis of President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump and his mindless toadies like Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, who apparently see no harm in disguised, assault-weapons-toting federal bullies raiding apartment buildings, schools or whatever gets in their way just to bust brown people who entered this country without proper authority to support their families.
“I’m fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump to secure our border and deliver the largest deportation operation in American history,’’ Barr said in a statement issued to WLEX-TV in Lexington. “I’ve been rated one of the top members of Congress on border security for standing with President Trump and we’re just getting started.’’
The “largest deportation operation in American history’’ that Andy is so proud of includes arresting a five-year-old boy standing in his driveway after just returning from pre-school wearing a bunny-shaped winter hat whose father has an active asylum case who doesn’t face any deportation order, according to BBC News.
Just where the child is being held is anyone’s guess at this point, although a family lawyer said he’s likely in a detention facility in Texas.
Maybe Andy can help us find him.
“Why detain a 5-year-old?’’ asked Zena Stenvik, the Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent. “You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Well, anything is possible under the Lord of Mar-a-Lago and his personal Stasi spreading fear in what were once peaceful and quiet neighborhoods.
Let’s acknowledge that enforcing immigration laws is a legitimate governmental role, although I should acknowledge that I am a soft-liner on the issue, a position that runs decidedly counter to most Americans. Folks who cross the southern border without proper authorization generally do so out of desperation, taking jobs that most Americans snub, sending money back home to keep their families stable and staying out of trouble.
I, frankly, don’t have a big problem with that. If you want to rip me for it, go ahead. There are considerations, not everyone can be an American, after all, and there’s always understandable terrorism fears, although the current administration has tossed out at least 400,000 undocumented folks thus far and not one has been accused of some form of terrorism.
Regardless, as previously noted, immigration enforcement is a legitimate government function. But when that enforcement becomes militarized, tyrannical and unaccountable, striking fear into the public’s heart at every step and proceeding in the most unamerican of fashions, it needs to stop.
As noted by Richard T. Herman, a nationally recognized immigration lawyer with the Herman Legal Group in Cleveland, this should not be a liberal versus conservative issue. “Government power must be limited, transparent, and restrained — or it will expand until it harms everyone.’’
Well, people are being harmed.
Under federal authority, ICE is conducting massive raids, implementing intrusive surveillance tactics and other murky methods without any accountability. That was best demonstrated in the death of Renee Good.
As widely reported, Good and her wife had just dropped her son off at school in south Minneapolis on Jan. 7 and were driving home when they spotted a gathering of ICE agents, part of Operation Metro Surge, the Department of Homeland Security’s ongoing effort to round up poor, brown people who don’t have papers. Good decided to stop and exhibit support for anyone confronted by the federal officers.
ICE agent Jonathan Ross drove around her, stopped his vehicle and walked back to her car. What transpired thereafter is unclear. Other agents approached and one ordered her to get out of the car. Good instead backed up a bit and started moving forward into traffic when Ross fired three shots, killing her as the vehicle was passing him.
This is so wrong on so many levels but is demonstrative of just how unaccountable ICE agents have become in carrying out their tasks.
Good obviously was trying to leave the scene. Whether she was right or wrong to do so doesn’t matter. Unlike police officers, ICE argents don’t have the authority to order a driver to stop. Ross claimed that Good clipped him with her car as she was exiting, an assertion that remains in dispute and isn’t proven by video of the incident.
Regardless, shooting at an individual should be the last thing anyone ought to consider doing in any situation, tense or not, especially if there’s no reason to believe the targeted person is packing. A lot of internet analysts are essentially saying Good deserved her fate for attempting to drive away and hitting, perhaps trying to run down, Ross, a claim that remains unsubstantiated.
Really? What would the harm have been if Good was simply permitted to scoot away? ICE agents could have easily gotten her license plate and had MPD track her down if they really thought she intended to cause someone harm. And if she did bump Ross in some manner, a bruise was a likely result.
Instead we have a dead mother shot – three times, by the way — by an agent of an organization that local authorities don’t even want in their town in the first place.
But the issue is accountability. Some witnesses maintain Ross should be charged with murder. Others insist he acted in self-defense. We’ll never know for sure. The U.S. Department of Justice has declined to investigate the incident, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asserted there exists no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.
“The Department of Justice, our civil rights unit, we don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger,’’ Blanche said, “We never do.”
Now, forgive me, that’s about the stupidest comment a federal official has ever belched out. He reached the conclusion that Ross’s life was in danger without a wisp of an investigation to determine if that assumption was accurate.
Even if there was some supporting evidence, and there doesn’t seem to be, anytime a sworn federal officer of any sort fires his gun and kills a person, somebody ought to take a little time and look into it. You can’t have law enforcement go around indiscriminately shooting unarmed private citizens. But here there is no accountability. As Herman said, “Government power must be limited, transparent, and restrained — or it will expand until it harms everyone.’’
That doesn’t mean there won’t be any federal investigation. The Justice Department is looking into Good’s widow, Becca, to determine her ties to groups protesting the local presence of ICE.
This entire federal overreach is now a tragedy. And it shows no sign of ending. Herman noted that there exists unaccountable federal power through raids and surveillance, an erosion of due process through detaining individuals first and sorting the situation out later. There are sweeping operations that harm communities and local economies and an extension of the “militarized enforcement culture that increases risk of tragedy.’’
I’m reminded of another incident, occurring on a sunny May day in Kent, OH, going on 56 years ago when the Ohio National Guard gunned down and killed four people protesting the Vietnam War. Nobody went to jail for that either.
But the incident was commemorated in a song from Crosby, Stills Nash & Young titled “ohio,’’ that included the phrase, “What if you knew her and / found her dead on the ground? / How could you run when you know?”