Operation Enduring Nuremberg: The Trump Diaspora begins...con carne!

[CountDeMoney]

The Opinion Pages | Editorial
Mr. Trump's 'Deportation Force' Prepares an Assault on American Values
The Failing New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
FEB. 21, 2017

The homeland security secretary, John Kelly, issued a remarkable pair of memos on Tuesday. They are the battle plan for the "deportation force" President Trump promised in the campaign.

They are remarkable for how completely they turn sensible immigration policies upside down and backward. For how they seek to make the deportation machinery more extreme and frightening (and expensive), to the detriment of deeply held American values.

A quick flashback: The Obama administration recognized that millions of unauthorized immigrants, especially those with citizen children and strong ties to their communities and this country, deserved a chance to stay and get right with the law. It tried to focus on deporting dangerous criminals, national-security threats and recent border crossers.

Mr. Kelly has swept away those notions. He makes practically every deportable person a deportation priority. He wants everybody, starting with those who have been convicted of any crime, no matter how petty or old. Proportionality, discretion, the idea that some convictions are unjust, the principles behind criminal-justice reform — these concepts do not apply.

The targets now don't even have to be criminals. They could simply have been accused of a crime (that is, still presumed "innocent") or have done something that makes an immigration agent believe that they might possibly face charges.

Mr. Kelly included a catchall provision allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers or Border Patrol agents — or local police officers or sheriff's deputies — to take in anyone they think could be "a risk to public safety or national security." That is a recipe for policing abuses and racial profiling, a possibility that Mr. Kelly will vastly expand if Congress gives him the huge sums required to hire 10,000 ICE officers and 5,000 Border Patrol agents.

He wants to "surge," his verb, the hiring of immigration judges and asylum officers. He wants to add processing and detention centers, which surely has the private-prison industry salivating at the profits to come.

He wants to ramp up programs deputizing state and local law enforcement officers as immigration enforcers. He calls them "a highly successful force multiplier," which is true if you want a dragnet. It's not true if you want to fight crime effectively and keep communities safe. When every local law enforcement encounter can be a prelude to deportation, unauthorized immigrants will fear and avoid the police. And when state and local officers untrained in immigration law suddenly get to decide who stays and who goes, the risk of injustice is profound.

So is the danger to due process. Current procedure allows for swiftly deporting, without a hearing, immigrants who are caught near the border and who entered very recently. But Mr. Kelly notes that the law allows him to fast-track the removal of immigrants caught anywhere in the country who cannot prove they have been here "continuously" for at least two years. He's keeping his options open about whether to short-circuit due process with a coast-to-coast show-me-your-papers policy.

He plans to publish data on crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants, and to identify state and local jurisdictions that release immigrants from custody. Why? To promote the false idea, as Mr. Trump has shamefully done, that immigrants pose particular safety risks and to punish so-called sanctuary cities that, for reasons of public order and decency, are trying to disconnect themselves from ICE.

This is how Mr. Trump's rantings about "bad hombres" and alien rapist terrorists have now been weaponized, in cold bureaucratic language.

Mr. Kelly promised before his confirmation to be a reasonable enforcer of defensible policies. But immigrants have reason to be frightened by his sudden alignment with Mr. Trump's nativism. So does every American who believes that the country is, or should be, committed to the sensible, proportionate application of laws, welcoming to immigrants, and respectful of the facts.

[Ed Anger]

Round em up. No more PRESS ONE FOR ENGLISH.

[derspiess]

Heaven forbid we enforce existing laws.

[Berkut]

The ease with which you paper over moral implications of acting with "But its the law" is depressing. You would have made an excellent member of Police Battalion 101.

[Ed Anger]

 

[Admiral Yi]

The ease with which you paper over moral implications of acting with "But its the law" is depressing. You would have made an excellent member of Police Battalion 101.

This is way over the top.  ANY punishment for breaking ANY law inflicts pain and therefore has moral implications. 

[Valmy]

Heaven forbid we enforce existing laws.

When they are detached from economic reality and will wreck the economy of numerous states? Yes, indeed. Pity we did not do the reforms championed by George W Bush.

[grumbler]

Heaven forbid we enforce existing laws.

Better that than focusing efforts on dangerous people.  After all, if we don't enforce all existing laws equally, we will have a shortage of terrorism and an excess of jaywalking.

[CountDeMoney]

Heaven forbid we enforce existing laws.

We always were, but hey, let's enforce them to the Nth degree of absolute silliness.

[LaCroix]

so, illegal immigration roundup goes up from like 500/year to 1000/year, or what kinda "cold bureaucratic" numbers are we looking at?

[Valmy]

so, illegal immigration roundup goes up from like 500/year to 1000/year, or what kinda "cold bureaucratic" numbers are we looking at?

We'll see. Obama was rounding them up at a record setting rate. Too early to tell if this actually generates results.

[Jacob]

Heaven forbid we enforce existing laws.

Are you trolling or is that an accurate description of your reaction to a seeming run-up to mass deportations?

[Berkut]

The ease with which you paper over moral implications of acting with "But its the law" is depressing. You would have made an excellent member of Police Battalion 101.

This is way over the top.  ANY punishment for breaking ANY law inflicts pain and therefore has moral implications. 

Yes, and if you don't care about any of it, and just blithely state "But its the law!" in order to avoid considering the moral justness of said law and how it is to be enforced, you are a immoral douchebag.

Especially when the reality is that you are a such a big supporter of the law because it targets groups you hate. Hence the reference to PB 101.

"We were just doing what the law demanded of us!" was their excuse as well.

[Admiral Yi]

Yes, and if you don't care about any of it, and just blithely state "But its the law!" in order to avoid considering the moral justness of said law and how it is to be enforced, you are a immoral douchebag.

Especially when the reality is that you are a such a big supporter of the law because it targets groups you hate. Hence the reference to PB 101.

"We were just doing what the law demanded of us!" was their excuse as well.

Shit, I didn't know that was the reason Speesh said that.  Now that I know I have to agree he's awful.

[derspiess]

He said me