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Progressive Lunacy on ICE
New York City, June 29, 2018 – Protest march calling on the government to abolish ICE in Lower Manhattan. / photo credit: shutterstock.com
“An intellectual,” observed Camus, “is someone whose mind watches itself.” True enough, I suppose, though it’s a pity that many who fashion themselves as intelligent apparently don’t take the time to actually listen to themselves.
ITEM: “ICE HSI [Immigration Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations] New York operation leads to arrests of 3 dozen Darknet vendors selling illicit goods, weapons, drugs seized and more than $23.6 million.”
ITEM: “Look at ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), what a group of incompetents. …” Dick Durbin (D/IL).”
The proximate cause of Senator Durbin’s discombobulated thinking (in addition to an apparent case of psychological projection), is his newfound concern over a body of immigration law that has been in effect for lo the last 20-plus years. The situation has been further aggravated by the recent publication of Obama Administration-era photographs showing children being kept in fenced-off areas, with some even appearing to be in cages.
Journalistic standards having sunk to levels even the Titanic couldn’t reach, some media outlets wrongly attributed those photos to the Trump administration causing folks like Durbin to demonstrate against the previous administration’s policies while thinking they were enacted by the current administration, thereby proving the regrettable wisdom of a remark attributed to P. T. Barnum that, “there’s a sucker born every minute.” Nothing really new to see there, and as soon as CNN figures out a way to pin the sinking of the Titanic on the Trump Administration, then Dick Durbin, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and the horses they rode in on will all demand that Special Counsel Meuller squeeze into one of those little diving subs and boldly go where no rogue prosecutor has gone before.
What is new, so far as I can tell, is the progressive insistence that the US abolish an organization whose very reason for existence is to defend the nation’s citizens against those who exploit our borders to further the interests of drug cartels, terrorists, brutal gangs, human exploitation and sex trafficking, and those who break our laws by entering the country illegally rather than by established legal processes. Of course, no organization is free from error nor totally free of those within the organization who would abuse its authority. But it pays to remember that if you abolish the agency that enforces immigration laws enacted by the people’s representatives you will be governing precisely against the consent of the governed thereby leaving your citizens vulnerable to the brutal exertions of drug cartels, gangs and terrorists. On the other hand, you will have earned the praise of Dick Durbin, Maxine Waters, and a great many editorial pages, so choose your poison carefully.
I confess that at first blush, those statements from the right to the effect that the American left is more concerned with protecting the interests of those who are here illegally over the interests our own citizens seemed a bit overblown to me. Surely, I reasoned, this was just another case of liberal egalitarianism gone mad and not an actual effort to diminish the rights and interests of American citizens. Then I recalled the progressives’ protracted silence at the news that the IRS, under the leadership of the Obama Administration, had been weaponized to target conservative organizations, going even so far as the demand to know the content of the prayers of subversive groups with sinister names, like the Iowa Coalition for Life.
Funny, but I don’t recall any feverish denunciations from Durbin, Waters, Pelosi, et. al., when the heavy hand of the state was wielded against American citizens who were guilty of simply opposing the policies of the Obama Administration. In May of 2013, the Washington Post reported on the Obama Administration’s investigation of reporter James Rosen, noting in part:
The Obama administration has pursued more leak investigations under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined [emphasis mine] ; it was criticized last week by the Associated Press for a sweeping search of the news agency’s phone records as part of one ongoing probe.
Were the bombastic rebukes of Durbin and Company unleashed when the federal government targeted our citizens? Where was progressive concern over creeping Presidential authoritarianism when it was learned that the Obama Administration’s shiny new healthcare law included the hiring of over 16,000 additional IRS agents to monitor whether or not citizens were in compliance with a law whose pages numbered in the thousands? Where were the progressive protests when the Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the Library of Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began employing armed SWAT teams to rein in American citizens?
On the contrary, in 2011 when heavily armed agents from the US Fish and Wildlife Service swooped in on Gibson Guitars with all the decorum of a raid on Al Qaeda, those who now yell the loudest about immigration law enforcement opened wide their collective mouths and — yawned. The sound of crickets chirping could also be heard from the left when heavily armed agents of the Obama Administration’s Food and Drug Administration raided the Pennsylvania farm of Dan Allgyer for the crime of taking unpasteurized milk (100 percent legal in PA) and transporting it across state lines to a cooperative of young mothers with children in Washington, DC.
Because the same people who throw America’s doors wide open for MS-13 gang members, human traffickers, and drug lords will also throw the book at Americans who simply want to send sustenance to needy women and children in Washington DC. So, what does all this mean? It means that you, the American citizen, who plays by the rules and forks over the taxes which support this madness, are being placed in a sort of double jeopardy by those you elect — those who expect you to abide by an ever-growing labyrinth of rules and regulations while simultaneously refusing to protect you against foreign-born threats to your safety and security.
So eager are progressives to harvest a fresh crop of Democratic Party voters, that they’ve even established places where those who break into the country illegally, including many who have criminal records, can seek sanctuary from the prying eyes of federal immigration officers charged with your protection. Which raises the question; where can American citizens go to seek sanctuary from MS-13, from the carnage that accompanies the flow — facilitated by the left — of deadly drugs into the country? In fact, as long as we’re talking about sanctuaries, maybe it’s time someone came up with a suitable sanctuary for American citizens against the catastrophic lunacy of the left’s suicidal tendencies.
Published in Politics
From the Federalist, Poe’s Law in full swing: A demonstration against ICE while its agents are putting handcuffs on a child prostitution ring operating in the protester’s own neighborhood.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/05/watch-neighbors-protest-ice-as-it-breaks-up-child-sex-trafficking-ring/
Good essay, thanks Dave. In the late 80’s and 90’s when we conducted sweeps to bust tar heroin dealers we had ICE agents that would participate in the sweeps. They had info on dealers that were wanted on Federal warrants, and they could help us sort out low level offenders that would face immediate deportation, and more dangerous offenders that the Feds would prosecute in Federal Court for Federal Pen time. All change is not necessarily progress.
For one terrifying moment I thought this was going to involve synchronized skaters in Blofeld pantsuits.
You stop right there, buster. Those enterprising people are dealing the drugs that Americans won’t deal.
I’m trying to see the world in shades of grey, but when my doctor told me how much the operation would cost to suck half my brains out to become warm and fuzzy I couldn’t afford it.
Thank you Dave Carter. ICE does so many important jobs and they deserve our support and tax dollars. And they don’t destroy families of illegals, the people who put their children at risk to break our laws do.
Yes, I’d seen that last week. Simply incredible.
Indeed. And thank you for your serving on the front lines here at home sir.
I feel like there is something obvious there that I’m just not getting. I’m sorry,…but I’m obviously not getting it. But you’ve given me an excuse to pour a drink,…so I can try again later. Cheers!
Thank you much!! And you are exactly correct!
Thank you!! Sometimes I need pictures. For that matter, sometimes I need comic books. I’d not seen Chairman Mao on skates before.
Let’s not forget, too, that HSI ICE endeavors to protect us from the trouble at its source:
From 2016, but still demonstrates that we need ICE. They still run Citadel episodically. I had a piece of the original op; one of those things that, though one may be a little cog in a big machine for a particular effort, still justifies a full career.