You Are Being Lied To About ICE

Pop quiz. During which Trump administration did the following happen?

• ICE has been targeting the home of immigrant children, mothers, and families in California, leading one critic to say the raids “go against our nation’s fundamental values of equality and justice for all.”
• Another said, “How then could America say it’s OK to send parents of children away? What value system is that? I think it’s un-American.”
• The American Immigration Council said that “ICE raids have left children without parents and feeling abandoned, separated nursing babies from their mothers, separated pregnant wives from their husbands, and compelled local communities and organizations to scramble to address child welfare crises in their wake.”
• The Los Angeles Times reported that ICE detained two legal immigrant women who’d been led into the country under the Violence Against Women Act. One was arrested in her home after ICE showed up looking for people who no longer lived there.
• ICE agents in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Southern California forced their way into homes without a warrant to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally. One mother said an agent threatened her “not to make him mad.”
• One Chicagoan was threatened with deportation, despite being a U.S. citizen who happened to be born in Puerto Rico.
• Northwestern University political science professor Jacqueline Stevens told one news outlet that “I think it’s pretty fair to say that there’s a low but persistent rate of people who are being held by ICE in violation of the law, who are U.S. citizens.”
• The Marshall Project looked at more than 300,000 deportations and, despite administration claims that ICE was focusing on the “the worst of the worst,” it found that about 60% were immigrants with no criminal conviction or whose only crime was immigration-related. Fewer than 20% had potentially violent convictions, such as assault, DUI, or weapons offenses.

If you guessed either the first or second Trump administration, you’d be wrong.

Because each one of these events happened during the Obama administration.

The Obama administration.

Yet there were no organized attacks. No massive anti-ICE protests. No doxxing of ICE agents. No assassination attempts. No need to call in the National Guard to protect federal law enforcement officers.

Under Obama, stories such as these were barely covered by the mainstream news. When ICE made mistakes under Obama, they were treated as just that, mistakes, not signs of malicious intent. Democrats might have grumbled now and again. But they never claimed Obama was terrorizing the country. Never said ICE was “invading” their communities. Never called it authoritarianism.

So why are they – and their legions of mindless followers – doing so now? The one and only reason is that Trump – not Obama – is in the White House, and Democrats want to portray everything Trump does as a sign that he’s a scary authoritarian.

Even the claim that there’s been a massive surge in deportations under Trump is wildly misleading, because the comparison is always to the Biden administration – which did nothing – not to Obama (who was once called the “deporter in chief”) or George W. Bush before him. The only thing that has changed is that this time around Trump has managed to reduce the number of illegals entering the country to near zero.

True, deportation is a dirty business. It always has been. Always will be. Which is why the best solution is to keep illegals from getting into the country in the first place.

Trump – unlike any of his predecessors – is doing both. And for that, he should be commended, not condemned.

–Written by the I&I Editorial Board