Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-This weekend, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched raids in a handful of American cities to capture and remove from the United States thousands undocumented immigrants who are not only in the United States illegally, most of whom committed other crimes while here, but who also who ignored a federal judge’s orders to exit the U.S.
That is the long and short of it; ICE is targeting people who have gone through the federal court system and were ordered to leave.
But to listen to Democrat politicians like California Senator Kamala Harris, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, recently elected California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, ICE is targeting families.
And that is utterly preposterous.
Federal immigration courts do not make rulings about whole families. They make individual rulings about specific people, one person per case. Harris, Newsom and Garcetti know this, but also know that whatever they say – no matter how erroneous – will put it out there by the media, unchallenged. The politicians also reiterate those false claims on their official social media accounts.
In fact, politicians putting forth such misinformation do precisely what they accuse President Donald Trump of doing; causing more anxiety in immigrant communities by encouraging those who have been ordered to leave the U.S. to go into hiding, which may result in ancillary arrests of other undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes and who have not yet had their day in immigration court, becoming collateral damage simply by being in the path of ICE agents who are not looking for them.
In a related development, the ongoing embrace of sanctuary city policies by Harris, Newsom and Garcetti resulted in a legal victory for Trump in a federal ruling last week that said his Administration could take into consideration sanctuary cities’ rejection of federal immigration law when it awards certain grants for better law enforcement.
Garcetti for certain will whine about that, too, which is consistent with his dodging of responsibility for civic problems he caused or made worse during his 18 years (and counting) as an elected official in LA City Hall. Note his new line on homelessness, in which he repeatedly claims that he isn’t responsible for the worsening crisis in LA. Now who believes that?
If you can’t trust Garcetti on that – and you shouldn’t trust him on much of anything anymore – one can’t genuinely believe that ICE is targeting families rather than individuals who already had their day in court.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.