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[The following is a letter I wrote in response to a conversation with a beloved relative.]
“Dear Beloved Elder Relative,
This is a letter to urge you to rethink what you are doing in supporting the protests against ICE’s law enforcement activities, and to ask you please, actually, to stop.
You and your friends at times lend your support to the anti-ICE protests in your adorable little town. And you know I support First Amendment protected expression, whenever citizens wish to express themselves.
But there are larger implications here, Beloved Elder.
I love you. I respect you.
I appreciate very much that you let me think about your responses to news events, and even let me describe them publicly at times, when I need a model of what a thoughtful liberal person, who lives in a deep blue state and watches CNN and listens to NPR, believes.
I appreciate that you, unlike most of the folks in your “tribe”, are always open to the evidence I share, even when it is contrary to these narratives. I appreciate that you consider my evidence open-mindedly, even when we do not agree at first, and even when we continue to disagree.
At times, you join your friends at the local anti-ICE protests, which take place in the city hall area of your tiny, comfortable town in your beautiful Western state. You and your friends are showing up, as you see it, for your “neighbors”; and you are “putting your bodies on the line”, which sensibility carries a pleasing echo of the advance guard of the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, which happened in your living memory.
This interpretation of what you are doing, no doubt feels good, as there are indeed too few roles for our elders to play, in our society, that tap their latent heroism and sense of devotedness to others.
You all also feel, I gather, that you are “engaging in radical compassion” – a phrase I have just started hearing from multiple sources, and one that worries me, for its neo-Marxist and implicitly extremist implications — and you are sure that you are all aligning with one another on the right side of history. You also, reasonably in some ways, are concerned that ICE agents have no badges and cover their faces.
I know that you and your protesting friends — who are of your generation, or of a generation younger; wearing North Face or REI jackets, and Ecuadoran-inspired, or actually indigenous-made, mittens, and headbands against the cold — greeting one another with happy smiles in the forbidding weather, uplifted by the energy of altruism — mean very well.
I know you see this as a simple David and Goliath conflict, with you all in the role of David.
But I think that interpretation of events is deceptive.
I also must note that your fellow anti-ICE protesters — like anti-ICE protesters across the country — are overwhelmingly white. You and your protesting friends are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, upper middle class, or even wealthy.
ICE agents are often barely middle class — the starting salary for an ICE agent is as low as $33,400 – and that they average $32 an hour. I must also note that 49.3% of them are not white; the second most represented ethnic groups of ICE agents is Hispanic, and then African-American. More than fifteen per cent of ICE agents are disabled.
Nonetheless, you and your friends truly do believe that ICE is a lawless militia sent by someone whom you also truly believe is a quasi-Dictator.
Your news outlets and social media feeds communicate to you that ICE is attacking people who are here having committed an “administrative offense”, who are “our neighbors” who “just want to work” in our country. I understand that you feel sure that in “standing up” against ICE operating in your community, you are standing up against incipient or actual Fascism.
I applaud your civic energy, even as I think it sorely misguided in this situation.
You and your friends also believe that the protesters in Minnesota are simply peacefully using their First Amendment protected rights to have their say, and that the deaths of the late anti-ICE activists, poet Renee Good and VA nurse Alex Pretti, who both were shot to death in conflicts with ICE agents in Minnesota, are examples of the mayhem being wreaked by a lawless violence of a band of thugs.
When Alex Pretti was killed, you and I spoke about it by phone.
Our disagreement was too painful, so we stopped our phone conversation and signed off. You felt that Alex Pretti was murdered in cold blood.
I texted you, “Alex Pretti had a weapon with a loaded magazine.” Then I sent you this: a CNN article and video appearing to show that a Federal officer took a gun from Pretti just before the shooting that killed Pretti.
I texted: “If you don’t plan to use a weapon you don’t load it. Very dangerous situation.”
You reply via text:
“It was holstered. He was shot. The NRA spoke out against this.”
I texted back: “I don’t doubt it. But [Beloved Elder], bringing a loaded weapon to a protest is a very dangerous thing to do. Anyone aware of a loaded gun, holstered or not, will assume it’s a shooter situation.” (I should have texted “may assume.”)
Frustrated by the fact that the media to which you listen, often mis-represent original quotes, I tracked down what the NRA had actually said. I texted you then, `“In a separate social-media post, the NRA said, “As there is with any officer-involved shooting, there will be a robust and comprehensive investigation that takes place to determine if the use of force is justified….As we await these facts and gain a clearer understanding, we urge the political voices to lower the temperature to ensure their constituents and law enforcement officers stay safe.” The NRA is saying that there should be a full investiogation and that everyone should lower the temperature. That is not the same as condemning the shooting […]”‘
“[Beloved Elder],” I texted further, “I wish you and your friends would consider what it is like to live in a society without the rule of law. It’s a catastrophe, but especially for women, children and the elderly.
You have to see how difficult and dangerous it’s being made, for ICE to do their jobs enforcing US law. Which agai if you don’t like the law, change it.
But for now the law says that people here illegally must be detained and deported.
As is the case in almost all other countries.”
You replied by text:
“He had a license; he didn’t do anything to be shot 10 times and murdered.”
You also texted,
“He was murdered trying to protect a woman. They fired ten shots into him and murdered him. He did not deserve that.”
I see from your point of view, how black-and-white you see this situation to be.
But please consider that you may be wrong.
I have rarely brought up an issue as serious and impactful in regards to our shared future in this country, as the one I am broaching.
Beloved relative, I want you to understand that ICE is not a lawless militia. This is a really important point for you and your friends, and half the nation, to take on board.
ICE agents are not making up their own rules as they go along, or flouting the laws of our nation. I have written about lawless militias, and their dangers, since my book The End of America was published in 2007.
I know a lot about thugs and lawless state-sanctioned violence, about its nuances and its history.
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took over Italy, at that time a fragile democracy, by sending groups of Blackshirts, thugs, who obeyed no laws — who were acting externally to the existing laws of Italy. The Blackshirts surrounded voting booths and intimidated voters, often using violence. They strategically attacked key leaders of Italian civil society — newspaper editors, national political opposition leaders, local mayors; they beat them severely; they killed, tortured and threatened numberless members of Italian civil society. Their goal was to intimidate those — the judiciary, Parliamentarians, even the local police – who might otherwise bring them to justice.
This tactic worked so well, and so quickly, that when Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922, he was able to take over power because Parliamentarians were looking at his massed band of thugs, and knew that they were already defeated. The existing government resigned, and King Victor Emmanuel III simply handed over power.
Thousands of Blackshirts, with Benito Mussolini, march on Rome, October 1922:
Shockingly to me, as the granddaughter of a man and a woman who lost nine siblings, along with their young families, to actual extrajudicial Nazi violence and murder, commentators such as “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert and others, are now referring to ICE as being “worse than Nazis”; Nazis at least, Cobert said, were willing to show their faces.
Stephen Colbert, who took on verbally people who are worse than Nazis:
Like Mussolini’s Blackshirts, upon which they were modeled, the SS and SA – Hitler’s informal thug caste, which were unleashed onto German cities before Hitler seized power in 1933 — wielded their violence outside of existing German laws. The Nazi paramilitary disregarded German law, in its rise to power:
“The Nazi Party’s paramilitary organisation were the Sturm Abeilung, more commonly known as the SA. The SA were formed in 1921 and were known as ‘brownshirts’ due to their brown uniform. Initially most members were ex-soldiers or unemployed men. Violent and often disorderly, the SA were primarily responsible for the protection of leading Nazis and disrupting other political opponents’ meetings, although they often had a free rein on their activities …The SA and the SS became symbols of terror. The Nazi Party used these two forces to terrify their opposition into subordination, slowly eliminate them entirely, or scare people into supporting them.”
Remember that when the Brownshirts started seizing and beating people in makeshift basement detention centers, Germany was still a fragile democracy. It still had a Parliament, and a set of laws; including guarantees of due process and prohibitions against excessive state violence.
The lawlessness deployed by the SA in those pre-1933 years, was the reason that they, like the Blackshirts before them, were so effective and terrifying: the existing laws of Germany did not restrain them, and, as in Italy, judges, civil society leaders, and local police were too frightened by SA violence, to enforce the existing laws.
The Brownshirts “arrested” — really, seized— citizens; Communists; newspaper editors and owners; businessmen; opposition leaders; Jews; random Germans whom neighbors singled out as being not sufficiently supportive of National Socialism.
“By engaging in violence, the Nazis increased their visibility, especially in large cities like Berlin, where it was easy for a speaker to get lost in the crowd; then, since police presence was inevitable, the forces of order became a protective force around the SA during their marches; finally, “seemingly audacious acts of provocation” were able to occur precisely because there was little risk of them growing out of hand, and “elated those who participated in them and thereby attracted new followers.” One can only marvel at the sheer genius of Nazi political activity.
“When Hitler finally rose to power the street violence changed and became an adjunct of state power, and Brownshirts set up their own illegal prisons — 240 where torture was carried out, and eleven early concentration camps, where they acted with impunity. “The centralized locations of many of these provisional prisons and torture chambers made the early SA terror a highly visible and at times audible element of Nazi rule,” […]. If SA violence during the runup to power was a harbinger of what would transpire when the party achieved power, SA actions when that finally occurred set the tone for the following twelve years.”
An account In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by historian Erik Larson, captures the day-to-day life of President Franklin D Rosevelt’s US Ambassador to Germany in 1933 and 1934, Professor William E Dodd. Prof Dodd noted that when an American citizen was seized by the SA, he was beaten so badly that he could not leave his bed for days; when he finally made it to the US Embassy, his body was a mass of bloody pulp.
By the time that Hitler engineered his full seizure of power after a questionable arson attack on the Reichstag, the nation had already been traumatized and “tenderized” by the completely lawless violence of the SA.
ICE, in contrast, dear Beloved Elder, is part of a Federal agency that is bound by a multitude of laws.
The agency and its agents are also bound by the Constitution. ICE is governed by almost 400 Federal statutes. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is primarily governed by federal immigration statutes, the U.S. Constitution, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies.
DHS policy limits the use of force:
“General Statement: Unless further restricted by DHS Component policy, DHS LEOs are permitted to use force to control subjects in the course of their official duties as authorized by law, and in defense of themselves and others. In doing so, a LEO shall use only the force that is objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him or her at the time force is applied.”
In other words, the DHS policy that outlines the permitted use of force, in defense of themselves and others, dates from 2018.
It is a President Joe Biden policy, Beloved Elder.
Agents must also abide by the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fourth Amendment ensures that ICE agents must have a reasonable suspicion before detaining anyone. It also prevents their entry into non-consenting homes without a judicial warrant.
Let’s remember what the Fourth Amendment actually says. It does not say that no law enforcement can ever enter your home. Rather:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That is exactly what the DHS guidelines spell out: Agents need “probable cause” or a “reasonable suspicion,” and warrant, in order to enter a nonconsenting home. Your standing between the ICE agents in your town, and such homes, is not in fact providing a bulwark against Fascism.
It is actually creating an obstruction of the provisions of the Fourth Amendment.
Key laws and regulations that govern ICE, and limit their activities, include laws that have been on the books for decades, such as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952: this gives the legal foundation for immigration enforcement, and includes oversight of identifying, detaining and removing illegal aliens.
Federal Statute Title 18 was enacted in 1948; it authorizes law enforcement to prevent the illegal movement of both people and goods. That governs ICE. Federal Statute Title 8, enacted in 1952, applies to immigration, refugees, naturalization and to removing people who are here illegally.
The laws that govern ICE have been the law of our land for decades. President Trump did not invent the legal underpinnings for what ICE is doing in 2026. The Congresses of the 1940s and 1950s, in your infancy and childhood, did, Beloved Elder.
If ICE agents break any laws, there is recourse. ICE frequently uses administrative warrants — Form I-200 — that require “specific, articulable facts to justify detention”, in order to enter homes. Targets of ICE arrests have the right to refuse a search of their persons and belongings, if the agents have no probable cause to search them. And importantly, as noted above, ICE may not use excessive force. ICE must follow the same “objective reasonableness” standard of using force, as do local police.
So: ICE is not The Gestapo.
The legally restricted conditions in which ICE operates are the opposite of the Gestapo’s lawless work conditions.
ICE’s actions are all subject to legal review and they must adhere to Federal statutes, the Constitution, and Department of Homeland Security policies.
I see that some people are very upset that sometimes American citizens have been mistakenly detained by ICE.
This kind of error on the ground, is inevitable. I feel that people are incredibly naive about what it means practically, to seek to detain, process and deport even a thousand people in a dense city — let alone one million people who are here illegally, let alone 17-30 million, many of whom are from contexts of extreme violence already.
By definition, Beloved Elder, this is an operation that takes on, as careful as ICE agents may be, the risk of errors, inherent in conducting an mass operation of law enforcement against people who are by definition not compliant with Federal laws to start with.
This mass operation is taking place in conditions of extreme stress and danger, and on an immense scale.
(If people don’t want to risk a potentially rough or emotionally upsetting encounter with an arrest by ICE, they can just go home. DHS gives them a free plane ticket, and $2600 per person, from your tax dollars, in order to do so. A family of four will have a year’s income, in many countries, by taking up this offer.)
Even if ICE were not surrounded frequently, and, as in Minnesota, perilously to them and others, with screaming, provocative, and physically intimidating observers/protesters, such mistakes will be made.
But guess what? If you are falsely arrested by local law enforcement or ICE or anyone in a policing role in the United States, you eventually get released.
I have been arrested twice in my life, for protest, as you know.
The first time, in about 1985 or 1986, I was a young Rhodes scholar; I was in London, with a group of Rhodes scholars and other Oxford University students.
We were protesting outside the US Embassy, against then-President Ronald Reagan’s policies in El Salvador.
I was eventually handcuffed by a bored “Bobby” — British police officer — who commented, “Silly Season” — meaning that it was summertime, when protests were more frequent.
He put me in a holding cell for several hours, til I was released, with no further action taken against me. The rule of law protected me then (it has been weakened in Britain since, and I would not wish to be at the mercy of the British justice system, today). But my own peaceful and compliant actions also protected me, and ensured that my protest and arrest would not escalate into violence.
In 2011, I was arrested again, outside a Huffington Post gala to which I had been invited.
I was arrested for explaining to Occupy Wall Street protesters that, so long as they did not impede pedestrian traffic, they had the legal right to protest peacefully on the sidewalk outside the gala.
I told the protesters their rights. I did not tell them to do things that they had no legal right to do.
I did not instruct the Occupy Wall Street protesters to obstruct the pavement, or the movement of NYPD. I knew local NYC law, and their obstruction of NYPD would not have been legal.
I did not encourage the Occupy Wall Street protesters to form barricades preventing NYPD vans from proceeding in traffic, thus endangering not just NYPD but nearby residents, by keeping ambulances and firetrucks from reaching them.
I did not instruct the Occupy protesters to confront unrelated pedestrians outside of the gala, to demand their “papers,” or to block their entrances to the gala; I did not urge the protesters to make pedestrians swear that they are not members of this or that group, as “protesters” are doing in Minnesota in demanding that passing cars and pedestrians swear that they are “not ICE’.
I did not do any of that, and I would never have done any of that, because none of those actions are First Amendment protected speech or actions; and all of them violate local and Federal laws.
Those are in fact very violent, very threatening, very insurrectionary, non-1A protected actions.
And the fact that “protesters” are committing those actions, does not make them 1a protected.
Or even moral, Beloved Elder.
You can see how illegally the NYPD behaved, in the videos of my 2011 New York City arrest.
This second arrest was a much scarier experience than the first arrest had been.
I was put, handcuffed, into a windowless van that took me to a separate precinct, far from the eyes of the legal observers; I was held in a blood- and feces-smeared cell for a number of hours, and then released, with a trial date. If I had been convicted, I would have been sent on to the violent prison, Rikers Island.
But the charges were eventually dropped.
The system worked.
But what also worked, within this Constitutional system, was the fact that I understood my own responsibilities as a protester.
I did not break the law, either before my arrest, during it, or after it.
Though I knew I was being unlawfully and unconstitutionally arrested, and though I tried calmly to cite, to the Police Chief arresting me, the NYC law that allowed protest on the pavement if it did not obstruct pedestrians, I submitted to arrest without any resistance.
You can see that in the video.
It wasn’t because I was too scared to resist arrest, though I was indeed scared; it was not because I was not passionate about the issue — free expression — that had led to the confrontation in the first place.
I submitted peacefully to an unlawful arrest because I respect the Constitution and the rule of law.
I knew that the place to fight an unlawful arrest, was in the court system, and not physically – not screaming, writhing, or kicking on the sidewalk, or provoking what could be an enraged mob to threaten NYPD.
I didn’t shout obscenities; I did not go limp and force NYPD to handle me bodily. I did not spit, or struggle.
Just as NYPD had 1A obligations as law enforcement, I had 1A responsibilities as a protester. So do all the protesters protesting ICE today.
Just as ICE must obey the law, so must the “F— ICE” contingents.
In all cases, this is a moral as well as a legal obligation..
This is the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The First Amendment, dear Elder, is not a hall pass to impede law enforcement in their Federally legislated activities; to block their ingress or egress to law enforcement operations; to stalk or harass pedestrians or drivers; to disturb the peace of residents of a city; to resist arrest, or to threaten the safe functioning of emergency services transit within a town or city.
None of that activity is identified as protected speech, above, in the Constitution.
We have no right under that beautiful Amendment to harass law enforcement, or to torture them with drums, whistles and screaming — all of which are tried and true methods to break down the mental health of prisoners, as we saw in the torture files of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
We have no 1A right to drive our vehicles toward law enforcement in any way, to use our vehicles to block traffic, or to harass pedestrians.
There is a great deal of case law and Federal law showing that one has the right, for instance, to hold up signs or to speak to people outside an abortion clinic, but not to harass or block or intimidate staff or patients seeking to enter that clinic.
Who pressed for such laws?
You and your friends did.
This was your side, beloved Elder, which supported limits on the protest of Right to Life protesters. The FACE act of 1994 forbids blocking entrances.
Who signed the FACE act? President Bill Clinton:
“After its enactment by Congress, President Bill Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act into law. Fines for violent offenders for their first offense can be as high as $100,000, with prison sentences of one year. Repeat violent offenders can receive up to three years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. If the protest resulted in an injury to clinic staff or a patient, the prison sentence can go as high as 10 years.
“In the case of first-time convictions of protesters who engage in nonviolent physical obstruction, such as sit-ins or blockades, the law allows judges to impose fines of up to $10,000 and six-month prison terms. Second convictions for these kinds of offenses are punishable by up to 18 months in jail and fines of up to $25,000. The individuals harmed by the protest activities may also sue the protesters for civil damages. […]
“Congress adopted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances in reaction to the increasing number of blockades of abortion clinics by anti-abortion groups and the inability or unwillingness of local law enforcement officials to protect the clinics from intimidation and violence. [Italics mine]
“The law was introduced in Congress after the Supreme Court ruled in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic (1993) that federal court judges were not permitted to invoke a Reconstruction-era civil rights law, the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, against the harassment and protest activities that frequently occurred outside abortion clinic entrances. The KKK Act prohibited conspiracies by persons seeking to deprive “any persons or class of persons” of equal rights.”’
Beloved Elder, the laws against violent protest, the reaction from ICE to violent protest to which you so object, are laws that your side passed, under your President Clinton, to stop pro-Lifers from being so threatening, obstructionist or intimidating that people’s rights are curtailed.
ICE is enforcing your laws.
It is up to protesters to know about local and Federal law regarding protest, and to abide by the First Amendment; it is up to protesters peacefully to submit to arrest if they choose to protest in a way that legally allows arrest; and it is up to protesters to be aware that attacking the vehicles of law enforcement, as Alex Pretti did, is not 1a protected speech; nor is creating noise levels that harm the functioning of human beings; nor is impeding law enforcement operations in any way.
1A does not cover threatening law enforcement – or anyone — or communicating a threat of violence.
Now let’s talk about what it means to break the law, and what it means to pick and choose the laws you enforce.
It leads us as a nation of citizens, to cross a barrier from which there is no returning.
You may think that people here illegally are just “committing a misdemeanor” (it is a Federal misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in prison, note); and that therefore you believe that their illegal presence in our country is not a big deal; and that sending in men with guns and masked faces, is a massive overreaction.
I would say you are completely wrong.
First of all, all of the illegal immigrants have broken our laws simply by being here, as I showed above.
Does the rule of law matter to you at all, Dear Elder? Between 17 to 30 million people simply disregarded our laws in order to be present in our nation.
What does it mean when you simply accept a situation in which people can pick and choose what laws they observe?
History shows that you soon have a collapsed society.
Second, millions of people being here illegally is a massive national security threat. Jan C Ting argues, in Immigration and National Security, that “The greatest threat to U.S. homeland security comes from illegals who enter the country through its porous borders in order to attack. The tide of illegal immigration must be stemmed in order to secure the United States against terrorism.”
Third, many of these people here illegally are actually criminals — I used to think that was a racist statement but statistically it is true — and hundreds of thousands engage in criminal behavior here.
There are at least 662,566 convicted criminals or illegal aliens with pending criminal charges, in the United States. That is nearly the size of the population of San Francisco, when I was growing up.
Fourth, those here illegally are taking resources away from low-income Americans, and especially from black and brown Americans. In your comfortable neighborhoods, you do not see the damage; you may see a worried gardener, a concerned nanny.
But in the neighborhoods where the illegal gardener or nanny may live, it is the American kids whose classes can’t proceed because too few children in them speak English. It is lower-income Americans who face hours-long waits in emergency rooms, for themselves in pain, or for their own children, because of the pressure on our medical resources of the people who are here illegally.
It is lower-income black and brown people who are expressing their frustration that the entry-level jobs that their own young adult sons and daughters used to have, are no longer open to those young Americans.
It is lower-income black and brown people, as in Brooklyn, whose kids’ school, James Madison, was appropriated to house people here illegally.
How is this situation okay with you?
Where is your and your friends’ “radical empathy” for the low-income communities, the communities of color, that you all used to champion so reliably?
Fifthly, and most importantly, is this:
There are certain unintended consequences of you and your friends choosing what US laws you will block and frustrate.
Please consider the long-term consequences of the “F— ICE” movement.
This movement reminds me a lot of how insultingly Vietnam veterans were treated when they came home from that war — a war supported by Congress and by Presidents.
Ask the same question that US military veterans asked themselves then:
Why should anyone fight your wars again?
Now ask: why should anyone in the future fight your future wars against crime, against natural disasters, against terrorists?
No one who is not the wife or child or parent of a soldier, a sailor, a cop, a firefighter — or an ICE agent — can imagine what life is like for their loved ones day to day.
ICE agents, like cops, throw themselves every single day into situations which they do not know if they will survive to see their kids and wives or husbands again.
ICE agents break into houses inhabited by violent cartel members. Like soldiers in combat situations, they face situations that could erupt at any moment into gunfire or in an explosion. ICE agents don’t know from one day to the next, if they will be injured or killed on the job.
Now add to the incredibly hazardous conditions for ICE agents doing their own jobs, a mass of mostly white people, of all ages, who are trying to make the situation even more dangerous; who are screaming into their ears, or cursing at them, or driving at them, or blocking their egress, or kicking out their taillights, as the armed Alex Pretti had done to an ICE vehicle eleven days prior to his death.
In addition to the risk from the target him or herself, ICE agents are seeking to accomplish their lawful mission in an incredibly dangerous and exhausting and emotionally draining field of operations.
Soldiers in comparable conditions reliably get PTSD.
ICE agents may also face mental health breakdowns from these conditions.
But whether that kind of damage is done to them over time or not, what they are seeing right now is Americans — many of them who are much more privileged than they are themselves — treating them with abusiveness and contempt.
Beloved Elder – really think about this; what this will mean going forward.
Finally there is this:
Cops and firefighters and veterans and soldiers are watching carefully how ICE agents are being treated.
Unsurprisingly, 200 police officers a week are quitting or resigning, in Zohran Mamdani’s New York, where Governor Hochul just declared her own non-compliance with ICE operations.
Beloved Elder, when someone breaks into your home, you will call the cops.
Do you expect them to answer?
Why should ICE enforce immigration laws, over time, if this is how they are treated by citizens?
Why should soldiers enlist to fight your wars?
Why should firefighters run into your burning building?
You should expect that, as First Responders, cops and soldiers see how ICE is being treated, they will resign, or fail to re-enlist, or simply go through the motions when called to put themselves in harm’s way.
Why should you assume that police or law enforcement will ever show up for real for you and your friends, if this is how you treat their colleagues?
Seriously.
You want to act out against ICE, to endanger them, to traumatize them on the job and burn them out; but when you are mugged or burglarized, you will call their colleagues — and expect to be protected?
Please do not be so naive.
Law enforcement will just turn away from citizens, and absent themselves from their own now-selfless civic duty.
Why shouldn’t they?
Look at how you are treating — law enforcement.
Beloved Elder, I have travelled in countries in which the cops have given up.
You still see them around. They still wear their uniforms and carry their weapons. But when a crime is underway, they inevitably don’t see it happen.
They turn away.
Knowing that there is no reason to put themselves in harm’s way, no mutual social contract with citizens or with political leaders, they align with whatever warlord or real tyrant is in power.
Beloved Elder, when that happens, there goes the rule of law.
Militias and gangs move in.
People fear going outside.
As in Haiti, people can’t take full-time jobs because they have to wait outside the schools’ gates to walk their children home at three o’clock.
Lawlessness – real lawlessness – takes over the streets.
And who always, always suffer most? As I have said before:
Women and children. The disabled.
And the elderly.
The ones who suffer most, in a society without the rule of law, Beloved Elder, are
People such as you and your friends.
###
Lastly, please think about what it means when states refuse to comply with Federal laws. Think of our US history.
Do you really want states to pick and choose what Federal laws they obey? Our system of state and Federal balance and alignment, was very carefully refined, from the start of our nation, and over time.
When this mutual agreement fails, we get tragedies such as the Civil War.
Leading up the the start of the Civil War, and starting with South Carolina’s effort to “nullify’ a Federal tariff in 1828, some states did what Minnesota and New York now threaten to do. They acted as if they knew better what to do for their constituents, than to accept Federal law. Southern states in 1860 and 1861 argued that the Federal government had broken the contract between the states and the Union, by failing to enforce the Fugitive Slaves Act. These states seceded as a result, asserting their sovereignty.
As in Minnesota today, many locals in the seceding states were aligned with their states’ “resistance” to Federal authority and saw the local states’ agendas in a positive light.
However, was this popularity of local “resistance” against Federal authority, worth it longterm?
The nation fell apart into a bloody civil war. Between 600,000 and 750,000 people died.
Do you want this risk?
Do you want the rule of law, that holds the fifty United States together as one nation, state law interacting with Federal in an orderly legal process — to fly apart again?
Think about Alabama in 1963.
Governor Wallace used Alabama’s National Guard to block African-American students from enrolling at the University of Alabama. He imposed a bigoted State preference over a Federal judge’s ruling that the University had to be desegregated.
President John F Kennedy had to Federalize the Alabama National Guard, to ensure that African-American students could enroll in the University.
Now it is an anti-ICE states’ rights movement, Beloved Elder, with which you happen to agree; but what if tomorrow, it is a state declaration of Sharia law in Oregon, or Texas, or California?
Or what if it is an order by Alabama or South Carolina to re-segregate the races?
Do you really want to destroy the delicate, even miraculous, respectful and legally orderly relationship in the United States, between state and Federal laws?
If you don’t like immigration laws that ICE is enforcing, change them.
Seriously!
You still live in a democracy. Elect people who will pass different laws. You can!
But — once the citizens and even states just decide what laws they will disobey — you no longer have a nation of laws. And you will have no choice about your leadership, or your society, at all.
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So I hope the above has given you pause.
I respect you.
I do.
But this movement of which you are a part, is unconstitutional madness. And that way lies the end of our nation — as one of laws, and not of men and women.
Beloved Elder, please, I beg you, reconsider.
For all of our sakes, and for America’s.
You have my heart.
Please also take and consider my evidence.
All my love,
Naomi”
