The Patriot Post® · The Future Is on ICE

It’s been a tumultuous year for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since President Donald Trump took office and began the hard work of ejecting millions of illegal aliens, many of whom were brought in under his predecessor, President Autopen. But while protests punctuated the summer and fall in places like Los Angeles and Chicago, things came to a head in Minneapolis after a surge of personnel included both ICE and the Border Patrol, and the resulting political optics have been terrible.

With two well-publicized shootings occurring within just a couple of weeks of one another — along with less-than-sensitive remarks by both DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Officer Gregory Bovino, whom President Trump described as being “a pretty out there kind of guy” — it was decided that a change of tactics was needed.

Enter Border Czar Tom Homan, who’s been praised for working with state and local officials to revamp the Minneapolis operation. Homan’s meeting with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey could produce “some sort of agreement that could serve as a model for other sanctuary jurisdictions around the country,” said the America First Policy Institute’s Cooper Smith. He added that success in Minneapolis could lead to breakthroughs in other blue cities, such as Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. “Hopefully that’s a path forward that everyone can be happy with,” concluded Smith.

But there will be a deft jujitsu to that approach. “Technically, only the feds can enforce federal law,” notes Andrew McCarthy at National Review. “States can help, and in some places, there is state law that duplicates federal law, so that the enforcement of state law has the effect of helping enforce federal law; but even then, the cities and states do not enforce federal law.” Then he added a caveat: “In many instances, state and municipal police, led by the FBI, join federal-state task forces targeting various kinds of crime. In those arrangements, the police are formally deputized to enforce federal law.”

McCarthy agrees with Smith that, if Homan succeeds, “He will have created a template for collaborative federal-local efforts in cities around the country.”

Conversely, Democrats are pressing the advantage from the drumbeat of coverage of the ICE shootings to further tie the hands of law enforcement. While much has been made about banning masks for law enforcement personnel or not allowing former ICE officers to become state police, as a Maryland proposal would do, the more important play is coming from an alliance between Democrats and civil libertarians. One proposal, for example, would establish a “private right of action,” allowing plaintiffs to sue for constitutional rights relief in state courts as opposed to strictly in federal courts, while another would ban states from delegating some federal immigration powers to states and local municipalities, such as Maryland attempting to ban local counties from entering 287(g) agreements. That pressure extends to the federal level, where Democrats were successful in stripping Department of Homeland Security funding from a must-pass measure to avoid a government shutdown, with the GOP compromising to allow the other five departmental spending packages at risk to proceed.

Leftists are giddy at the prospect of an ICE withdrawal from Minneapolis. Citing declining poll numbers, Newsweek’s Billal Rahman crows, “What began as a high-profile federal enforcement operation has become one of the most damaging episodes for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and broader domestic agenda.” Rahman also breaks out the pollaganda, claiming, “Polling shows the Minneapolis operation is not just a local flashpoint, but has translated into a nationwide collapse in public support for federal immigration enforcement and Trump’s handling of the issue.” As proven by Rahman’s lead paragraph, the media would rather focus on the two who were killed by interfering with a law enforcement operation than on the myriad hardened criminals removed from the Twin Cities area by the ICE enforcement drive.

Newsweek also found a longtime ICE officer who predicted, “There’s no coming back from this.” While Darius Reeves, described by Newsweek as “a longtime ICE field office director who served under four presidents,” makes a valid point about the Border Patrol being something of a fish out of water during the Minneapolis operation, the piece’s overall tone was intended to soften support for ICE. Apparently it’s working because, as the tome describes, “Several Republican senators, including Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Curtis of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have all called for a thorough investigation into (rioter Alex) Pretti’s death.” While most of them could be described as the squishy center of the GOP, only Cassidy and Collins will face voters this year, with Tillis retiring.

It’s become apparent that the Democrats are trying to make overly aggressive immigration enforcement into an issue despite the fact that most Americans still want illegal immigrants to be sent back home. Indeed, some of the polling on enforcement is brutal for Democrats.

Certainly, leftists will do their best to make martyrs out of not-so-peaceful protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but the key will be reminding people of the crimes we avoid by taking proven, convicted criminals off the streets and ejecting them from our country, hopefully never to return thanks to a less porous border than we had over Joe Biden’s four years.