I don’t know why people are making a big deal out of this. The purpose is to round-up and deport scofflaws who have already been legally ordered to leave the country. Enforcing court orders is actually a legitimate function of the executive branch. Maybe people are just shocked that Trump is actually doing his job.
I do marvel at the stupidity of telling people in advance precisely when you are coming for them. Now I wouldn’t know about this kind of thing, but guys who are good at fighting always say to me that the real key is never to say “OK, let’s fight” or “I’m going to kick your ass,” but simply to proceed to the ass-kicking without the announcement. And above all, never say “I’m going to kick your ass by jumping you when you get off the bus Sunday,” because they will either (1) take an Uber that day, or (2) arrange to have their five toughest, most heavily-armed friends with them on the bus.
Based on that general set of principles, this advance announcement means either that the ICE people will find nobody, or they will be in danger from people defending their friends and family.
Basically, for some people whatever Trump does regarding immigration enforcement, he’s wrong.
I understand not wanting to rip apart families by deporting all of the illegal immigrants in this country. But trying to stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens is crazy in my opinion. If these efforts were limited to people arrested for minor crimes (or even a more serious first-time offense like DUI that could be considered a mistake) I could understand it. But it doesn’t appear that most of these sanctuary city policies make that distinction or even exempt violent offenders.
I used to teach at a high school in the South Bronx. Most of our students were really good kids. But some were not only disruptive, the were dangerous. I had a student who was a member of the Bloods threaten to murder another of my students. He (the Blood) was caught in my class with a knife with a 9″ blade. Under Dept of Education rules he was subject to a mandatory 1 year suspension. But our school psychologist argued he shouldn’t be suspended at all because he had an undiagnosed emotional disturbance. Now, I would have liked to see that kid get help, but that wasn’t going to happen in our school and keeping him there was putting other students at risk. I thought we should jump at the chance to get him out, just as cities should jump at the chance to get violent criminal aliens out of our country generally, and their city specifically.
I’m fine deporting violent criminals, sex offenders, and hard drug dealers – US citizen or not.
I mean if Trump wants to play the hardball stance, then come to agreement with Mexico and Central American countries. We’ll take your migrants as citizens, and you can have our violent felony offenders and do what you want. We’ll throw in a few billion we would waste on a wall as well.
Sounds good to me.