Even if his successor was from the opposing party, before 2016, you would seldom see a president be critical of the actions of the next in line. However, Donald Trump has seemed to be the punching bag for every living Democrat who we were saddled with — not just the hypocritical Joe Biden, but also Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. It’s the latter two who have made the headlines with their criticism of ICE after the shooting of an armed protester this past weekend in Minneapolis.

Since the government agency of ICE was formed after he left office, the only “ice” Bill Clinton was intimately familiar with was the substance he advised Juanita Broaddrick to put on her lip after his alleged assault. But that didn’t stop him from lambasting the modern-day version, stating, “Peaceful protesters and citizens exercising their constitutional right to observe and document law enforcement have been arrested, beaten, teargassed, and most searingly, in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot and killed.”

Clinton also noted, “People, including children, have been seized from their homes, workplaces, and the street by masked federal agents.” You know, I seem to recall this also happened to a child named Elian Gonzalez because his family, honoring the wish of his mother, who died on the journey to escape the Castro regime, wanted to keep him in America rather than send him back to Cuba with his father. Clinton didn’t have a problem with seizing the child — at the point of a rifle — back then. Moreover, do we need to compare his (literally) scorched-earth tactics of capturing a fugitive named David Koresh with the overall restraint ICE is showing under adverse conditions?

As Representative Tim Burchett intoned on X to Clinton, “You bombed an aspirin factory to take your bad decisions out of the headlines. I’d sit this one out.”

Meanwhile, Barack Obama had his own comments. “The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy,” he sanctimoniously pontificated. “It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”

Yet Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, also worked in the Obama administration, receiving a Presidential merit award for his service in 2015.

“During his two-term tenure, Obama received the title of ‘Deporter-in-Chief,’ and also had 67 illegal immigrants die in ICE custody under his watch. Yet there wasn’t one protest to speak of on this,” Red State’s Jennifer Oliver O'Connell reminds us. “The Obama administration was in the crosshairs with the ACLU and human rights groups for its subpar standards at ICE facilities, including putting kids in cages.”

“Oops.”

This isn’t to say that groups didn’t mildly object to Obama’s deportation role as it happened, but you may remember that “kids in cages” didn’t become a thing until Trump took over in his first term. Even then, the issue with illegal immigration remained manageable until President Autopen decided to throw the border wide open for four long years, allowing millions of undocumented migrants to flood the system in a classic Cloward-Piven move. While 2.5 million illegal aliens have been removed in Trump’s first year — either by force or by incentive, as columnist Byron York relayed last month — there are still many millions to go, and that number includes the “worst of the worst” that ICE and our Border Patrol are focusing on nationwide, including Minnesota.

Unfortunately, the Land of 10,000 Lakes is presenting 10,000 problems in getting those who are illegally here removed as a sanctuary state. The cheap-seat catcalls of Clinton and Obama that break the longtime norm of presidents allowing their successors breathing room aren’t helping the situation, so perhaps they should heed the frequent advice they’re getting to sit this one out and let Donald Trump handle this.