Pirate's Cove

Um, why not? The LA Times Editorial Board is rather vexed

The Trump administration can’t arrest its way out of our immigration problem

State and local governments in California rightly recognize that it’s up to the federal government to determine which people living in the country illegally ought to be tracked down and deported. It’s no more the responsibility of the Los Angeles Police Department to run immigrants to ground than it is for them to sniff out people cheating on their federal income taxes.

It’s a cute argument, but, typically the IRS has other methods other than physical arrest to deal with tax evasion. By the LATEB reasoning, local, county, and state law enforcement shouldn’t assist in capturing kidnappers or killers who fled from other states. Oh, and then there’s this little thing called federal law, which requires cooperation.

There is an important public safety reason for keeping local police and sheriff’s deputies out of the deportation business. If people who are living in the country illegally come to view local law enforcement officers — whose duty is to maintain the peace and enforce criminal codes — as just another set of immigration agents, they will be far less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigators. In Los Angeles alone, Police Chief Charlie Beck said last year that fewer Latinos in the city were reporting rapes, spousal abuse and other crimes for fear of being deported under the Trump administration’s policy of stepped-up arrests.

Well, they’re here unlawfully: if they’re so afraid, they can……leave! They can pack their stuff up and go. Notice the phrase “enforce criminal codes” above. The LATEB just stated that it is the duty of the police to enforce immigration law. Maintain the peace? Yeah, how about keeping U.S. citizens from have their lives damaged by people who shouldn’t be here.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made no secret of its disdain for state and local governments that refuse to use their own resources to help Washington enforce federal immigration law. Twice this month, top officials — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan — said they have asked the Justice Department for an opinion on whether local officials who don’t report residents who are in the country illegally can be charged with violating the federal laws on harboring. Homan also has warned that he will “significantly increase our enforcement presence in California” to ramp up arrests in neighborhoods and on streets as a payback for the California Values Act (the “sanctuary state” law adopted last year), which denied ICE agents access to jails unless they have a warrant. “California better hold on tight,” he said in a Fox News interview. “They’re about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation officers in the state of California.”

Do you know what this does? It scares illegals. It makes them leave. And, it makes them think really hard before coming. And it puts those who protect federal law breakers on notice. The LATEB sees the notion that state and local officials follow all laws differently

That’s not enforcing immigration law. That’s coercion by the federal government to try to compel local officials to, in effect, do their jobs for them. It is also the kind of thuggishness we’d expect from someone like Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not the president of the United States.

It wouldn’t be necessary if state and local officials weren’t supporting lawbreakers. It shouldn’t be necessary for Los Federales to threaten state and local officials to follow the law.

It’s deplorable that the government is pursuing such a heartless and heavy-handed approach to enforcing immigration laws in service of a system that is hopelessly broken. A wise president would pursue truly dangerous immigrants who are here illegally, find ways to keep new arrivals out (and ensure visa holders leave when they are supposed to) and work with Congress for a humane resolution to the fate of more than 11 million people who have lived in the U.S. for, on average, more than a decade. But wisdom and this president are opposing forces.

Team Trump is going after the dangerous ones. They are finding ways to keep new arrivals out, in big part by creating massive fear in those who would come illegally. Interestingly, another method, the border wall, is something Democrats, like the LATEB, are totally against.

Why should we find a “humane resolution” for the 11 million? If someone has been stealing food out of the LA Times breakroom for years and years, and is finally caught, do you think they find a “humane resolution”, or terminate that person? At the end of the day, the American people come first.

And all these illegals who’ve been here for, “on average”, more than a decade? Instead of demanding citizenship, healthcare, education, welfare, jobs, food, etc, while refusing to learn the language, with tons committing crimes and stealing identities, they could have taken the time to apply for citizenship and gone through the lawful manner to become a citizenship.