As I write this, things are spinning out of control in Minneapolis.
Anyone with eyes can see that something is not right with how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is going about their business. Regardless of where you sit politically, common sense alone should tell us that enforcing immigration laws with such aggressiveness and violence is wrong.
Yes, it’s also wrong to interfere with federal agents doing their jobs. It’s also wrong for leftist propagandists to claim that the right to protest includes physically intervening to prevent law enforcement. And it’s also wrong when local leaders pour oil on the fire rather than do everything possible to de-escalate.
With tensions reaching a boiling point and Senate Democrats threatening a government shutdown if a bipartisan spending package includes $10 billion for ICE, it’s an encouraging sign that President Trump and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spoke about a better path forward that would ease tensions in the state. Let’s hope that happens.
The shame is that all this could have been avoided had ICE leaders not confused law enforcement with national security.
Preventing terrorism is a national security issue; enforcing immigration laws is a law enforcement issue.
These two are night and day.
With terrorism, the cost of a mass attack like 9/11 is so high there is a much more lenient set of rules based on aggressive intelligence. As Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review Online, “Intelligence agencies are dedicated to preventing terrible things from happening. They mainly operate outside the U.S., often in badlands where it could be a grievous mistake to presume innocence and where their espionage activities, in service of American security, are illegal — and could get them killed if discovered. They are not heedless of due process, but it is a decidedly secondary concern.”
By contrast, with law enforcement, due process is a primary concern.
“American law enforcement agencies mainly solve crimes after they happen, in a nation in which people are presumed innocent,” McCarthy writes. “Ergo, they must keep due process front-of-mind.”
Illegal immigration, he adds, “should be a law enforcement problem, one that we manage through reasonable policing. The public has never expected the government to arrest and deport every non-American who is living in the country illegally.”
I hardly need to add that ICE authorities have gone in the other direction, treating illegal immigration as if it were a threat to national security.
Admittedly, there are complications. Border security and the presence of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens can indeed become national security challenges, not mere law enforcement problems.
“When border security collapses,” McCarthy writes, “it is impossible to protect against foreign threats. Defended borders are an ineliminable element of sovereignty.”
This is the dilemma: “The anti-American left sees no problem at all because it wants radical transformation of the United States. The MAGA right, by contrast, sees an undifferentiated crisis of illegal immigration.”
Most Americans are somewhere in between.
“The vast majority of people see border security as vital. We want effective control: Everyone trying to enter should be confronted, and those without legal entry authority should be turned away,” McCarthy writes. “All that said, the fact that illegal immigration became a national security challenge does not make the illegal presence of each individual alien a national security matter.”
The ugly chaos on the streets of Minneapolis is the result of leaders who only know how to use blunt instruments. I know that political partisans are taking sides and arguing that it’s the other side that has gone too far. But at this point, all sides must agree that the crisis itself has gone too far and it’s time to de-escalate. What our country needs most is to start healing.
Simply put, the best way to defuse this ticking time bomb is to lean on common sense. Now that our border is under control, it behooves us to treat illegal immigration as a law enforcement issue rather than a threat to national security.
The real threat to our nation is happening on the streets of Minneapolis.
