Illegal immigrants and their advocates are upset that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are neither blind nor deaf.
Good luck figuring this one out:
“Activists across the country say they are being targeted by federal immigration authorities for speaking out at protests and accusing the government of heavy-handed tactics,” NPR reported this weekend.
What the report doesn’t mention until the fourth paragraph is that the aforementioned activists and volunteers are in the U.S. illegally.
“We’re always at the marches and giving interviews, without fear of what could happen,” Zully Rodriguez, one activist caught by ICE, told NPR. “So to go against us is a way to intimidate the community.”
The American Civil Liberties Union is also upset that ICE agents respond when undocumented immigrants make themselves prominent and highly visible, announcing that they have broken the law.
“It’s all of a piece with what this Homeland Security Department has been doing around the country,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. “You have the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security, and the acting director of ICE all making various threats to sanctuary cities and their officials.”
Maru Mora-Villalpando, who is in the U.S. on an expired tourist visa from 1996, complains that ICE is targeting her because she is a vocal opponent of the agency’s detention policies.
“My first sense was that ICE was trying to send me a signal to stop my work,” Villalpando, who lives in Washington state, told NPR. “The public needs to know what’s going on.”
To sum it up: ICE is being accused of playing dirty because it notices when people publicly announce that they broke the law.
This isn’t even the first time that ICE has been accused of trying to “silence” illegal immigrants. Two immigration advocacy groups sued the agency in February, alleging that it was “targeting” immigration activists for possible deportation.
The framing of these complaints is bizarre. Enforcement is sort of ICE’s job. I mean, it’s right there in the name! This does not seem so much a case of ICE “targeting” activists and volunteers as much as it’s a case of illegal immigrants painting bull’s-eyes on their heads and daring ICE to respond. As Jazz Shaw noted at Hot Air, “If [ICE is] in town conducting a sweep and you’re on television announcing where and when you’ll be leading the next march, well … you’re making their job awfully easy, don’t you think?”
“Also, there is absolutely a reason for ICE to make the extra effort to pick up these activists,’” he adds. “Their alleged activism is in support of people who are breaking the law and they don’t need any public support. By going on television and giving interviews, they’re basically wagging their fingers in the face of law enforcement and saying, ‘Look at me! I’m here illegally and you can’t touch me!’”
But ICE definitely can touch them, especially if they’re out there helpfully volunteering the fact that they’re here as a result of breaking immigration law.
