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Family has encountered ICE
Difficult confrontation for no apparent reason in Dublin
Mixed emotions, mixed reactions and a fair bit of confusion flow through my heart and mind these days.
Part of me looks at Minneapolis and is equal parts horrified, supportive of ICE, negative toward the organizers of the protests and realizing I’m viewing it from more than 2,000 miles away through my set of assumptions and beliefs.
Let me make two views clear:
- The protestors have a right to gather and express their views.
- They do not have the right, without consequence, to interfere with law enforcement doing their job.
Frankly, I have an opinion on the shooting of the woman in the car and am disturbed—to put it mildly—by the killing of the man. Although, going to a protest and planning to be disruptive and potentially encounter law enforcement while legally armed and carrying two extra magazines makes me wonder about his common sense.
I think the feds, in as Republican administration because the Democrats welcome them, should have taken on sanctuary cities and states head-on. The constitution is clear that federal law trumps local and state, but administrations have backed away from taking it on. They are paying the price now with the block-headed mayor in Minneapolis and the remarkably incompetent governor. I hope he coached football better than he runs a state. To think that clown was Kamala Harris’ choice for vice-president when other capable people were available—ranks with Joe Biden’s selection of Harris after he painted himself into a corner with typical Democrat identity politics.
I write this as a guy who personally witnessed the clashes between the Alameda County Sheriff’s Dept., the California Highway Patrol and protestors at UC Berkeley during my freshman year there. I will confess that I was in the gym for my intramural basketball when the National Guard Helicopter released tear gas on the campus.
I left that experience with opinions about the “blue meanies” as the deputies were dubbed by protestors. Those images come back when I see video of the ICE and Border Patrol officers clashing with protesters who are trying to keep them from doing their jobs. It appears to me that the federal officers have been pretty restrained in making arrests. It’s also interesting how safe the protesters feel to harass or worse the officers.
That said, confronting a masked, helmeted, uniformed officer is scary by definition. The ICE officers, despite what Democrats including our own Rep. Eric Swalwell say, have a valid reason for covering their faces given the doxing that’s gone on.
My family has encountered the flip side. My son-in-law, a native Pakistani with dark skin, was running a shopping errand in Dublin on a recent Sunday morning. He’d just left a parking lot when an undercover vehicle with red lights stopped him. The person confronting him wore no ID, assumed he was a foreign citizen and was truly unpleasant. The confrontation ended by my son-in-law produced both a driver’s license and U.S, passport card. The reason for the stop was never specified before it abruptly ended.
I have been surprised by how many people buy into the media narrative about “our neighbors.” That they violated the law to get here seems to be conveniently ignored. And the expectation that they pay any penalty for breaking the law seems to float away in the wind.
When President Biden, despite the continued lies by his Homeland Security Sec Alejandro Mayorkas saying the border was closed, allowed a tsunami of people from all nationalities to surge across the board. As promised during the campaign, the Trump Administration is trying to send them back after doing yeoman work to close the border.
That leads to the mess we have been witnessing in Minneapolis. That came more home to me this week when I read Jo Saxton’s blog. Her family has lived in the Minneapolis area for years as she and her husband pastored a church and raised their girls. Her commentary shows just how life has been upended in her world.
Fortunately, it appears the situation may have ramped down this week after Trump sent his border czar Tom Homan to cool the situation down. Progress appears to have been made with 700 federal personnel leaving immediately and local law enforcement willing to notify and hand-off immigrants wanted by the feds in the jails instead of releasing them to the streets.
Here’s hoping the Justice Dept. gets to the bottom of where the funding is coming for to build the organizational structure around the protesters.
