So then, what are we to make of State Senator John Larson’s most recent attack on ICE, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement?
As its title suggests, ICE is the enforcement arm of US
immigration and custom processes, which include the time honored and orderly
entrée of immigrants into the United States. Border jumping, rampant during the
administration of former Democrat President Joe Biden, remains illegal, and is invariably
attended with consequent illegal acts, such as gang activity, drug dealing,
murder and mayhem.
Even Larson might agree that a family in Connecticut that
made loads of money by facilitating illegal border crashing, charging the
“illegals” large entrance fees and later demanding a cut on their annual
salaries, was in retrospect an attack on illegal immigrants, victims of the
violation of a process ICE fully intends to restore. The chief mandate of ICE
is to enforce prevailing immigration law, which assures legal entrée into the
United States following standard processing.
The United States tracks “border encounters” between agents
and migrants seeking illegally to cross the US border; it does not publish data
on the net number of migrants who enter illegally and remain in the country.
“Under the Biden administration, there have been 6.4 million encounters outside
official ports of entry along the southern border so far [since 2024], with the
yearly average more than quadruple that of the [previous] Trump administration,
according to a Monitor analysis of CBP [Customs
and Border Protection] data. In addition, CBP agents have registered more than
1.6 million encounters at official ports of entry with migrants deemed “inadmissible,”
some of whom are allowed to temporarily enter the country.”
Laws that do not have an enforcement mechanism are paper
laws that may be – and have been -- violated with impunity. The unbearable load
of illegal immigrants avoiding legal processing during Biden’s open border
administration has been whittled down to a trickle since President Donald Trump
regained office.
All quotes below are taken from a recent Hartford Courant
story, “Lawmakers condemn ICE arrests at CT car
wash. It’s ‘government thuggery,’ Larson says.” Here is Larson
inveighing against ICE:
“I condemn, in the
strongest possible terms, the actions taken this morning by ICE in Newington
when they grabbed seven individuals at a local car wash. After speaking with
Mayor Trister, I can confirm that no
local officials were notified (emphasis mine) and that no details have been
made available about who these men and women are. Snatching people at work is
not keeping our community safe – it is government thuggery, and this, combined
with his actions in D.C. only further show President Trump’s descension (sic)
to authoritarianism. This is exactly the kind of heavy-handed, unconstitutional
action we have come to expect from his administration and his ICE
operatives. They operate in secrecy, wearing masks, ignoring due process,
disregarding the rights of individuals, and showing no respect for the laws of
our state or the elected officials of our communities. These raids are not about safety. They are about fear. They
undermine trust, divide our communities, and trample on the very principles of
justice and fairness that define our nation. This must stop, and it must stop
now. I will continue to stand with our immigrant neighbors and work with my
colleagues in Congress to hold ICE accountable and ensure that our Constitution
and the rule of law are respected.”
The Courant tells us, “Larson is also a co-sponsor of the No
Secret Police Act to require ICE agents to identify themselves and bar them
from wearing masks and a co-sponsor of the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act
to prevent ICE raids at schools, hospitals, courthouses, and places of
worship.”
Critics of Larson’s No Secret Police Act insists that ICE
masks are necessary because ice agents have been “docked” by radical opponents
of ICE, some of whom are quite willing to commit violence upon the agents once
they have been publically identified by leftists with knives in their brains.
1) “I can confirm
that no local officials were notified” concerning the raids. Would it not
be pointless to notify officials operating under Connecticut’s Trust Act, the
purpose of which is to prevent officials from working cooperatively with ICE
agents?
2) The actions taken
by ICE agents in Newington and elsewhere in Connecticut represent a heavy-handed, unconstitutional action.
Perhaps, but only in the sense that any lawful detention or arrest must seem to
those detained or arrested “heavy handed” (read: successful). Larson does not
tell us why he regards such commonplace interventions as unconstitutional. Is
it not usual for enforcement authorities to detain or arrest a bank robber? No
doubt the bank robber seeking to make an unlawful withdrawal may
regard his detention or arrest as heavy-handed and perhaps unconstitutional.
But should the bank robber apply for help to his U.S. Representative on the
grounds that his arrest was unconstitutional, Senator Compassion may be
forgiven for turning aside the unconvincing notion that lawbreaking is in some
sense constitutional.
A cynical Republican tells me that Larson’s heavy-hand may
have been forced upon him by circumstances. While Larson’s gerrymandered 1st District is an
impregnable Democrat fortress, he is being challenged this time around by a
few hopeful Democrats, among them former Mayor of Hartford Luke Bronin, young,
popular and not at all Mamdani-like. Larson, my cynic tells me, may have been
forced left by Connecticut progressives. The
future, Yogi Berra tells us, “ain’t what it used to be.”
Comments