Grizzly Groundswell

Here’s something that I was asked to help get out there by an old friend and some new compadres at Miss Beth’s Victory Dance (a great pro-military and grassroots blog). I may be an L.A. guy now but I grew up in Tucson, AZ and there is some ridiculous immigration news going on there. The immigration issue has become a national topic of conversation only in recent years. However, to those of us who have spent our lives living near the Mexican border (L.A. is one of the farthest places away from it I’ve ever lived!) it’s been a problem for decades. They didn’t all just show up last week.

A synopsis of what happened in Tucson: a high school boy was caught with some marijuana (still illegal, kids!) at school and the police were summoned. They called his parents and found out that exactly zero percent of the family were living here legally. So they summoned the Border Patrol who, last time I checked, handled stuff like this. The boy and his family were deported.

The fallout from this is that the Tucson Police Dept. is now being excoriated by the local press, which is using some of the most convoluted logic I’ve ever seen.

Here’s one gem, from Ernesto Portillo Jr. in The Arizona Daily Star: “Schools in our community should be places where youngsters feel safe, regardless of their legal status.” So the kid with the drugs should have been made to feel safe and good about himself because he was at school. Makes perfect sense…to someone who has just had a frontal lobotomy. “Legal status” is such a broad term. Should a heroin dealer be allowed to peddle drugs to classmates? Probably only as long as it’s during school hours, right, Ernesto? We’ll never know because the fact that the illegal immigrant had illegal drugs isn’t being discussed in the local press. What he did wasn’t wrong. The officers doing their jobs were wrong.

This is from today’s opinion page in the Daily Star: (Under the headline “TPD was wrong to involve Border Patrol”) “The incident is regrettable because we fear it will create mistrust of the Police Department in the immigrant community and could hinder crime-fighting efforts in our city.” I agree that legal immigrants shouldn’t fear the police but I grew up in an era when people doing something illegal were supposed to be a little skittish around cops. What am I missing here?

More from this insane editorial: “We have stated on this page previously that it is unwise for police to enforce immigration laws.” Um…read your own paper, they didn’t. They called the Border Patrol to do it. Maybe we need to send a law enforcement organizational hierarchy chart over to the Star’s editorial staff. Expecting them to follow something arranged logically is a bit of a stretch though, isn’t it? I’d have better luck getting an iguana to understand string theory.

This is the immigration battle reduced to its most absurd level. If you’re doing something illegal, you’re an innocent babe in the woods who should be protected (OJ, anyone?). If you enforce the law or support those who do, you’re an evil xenophobe. But it has serious consequences. TPD folded under pressure and agreed to not involve the Border Patrol in cases of immigration when a school or church is involved. Yes, the law enforcement agency in Tucson has now told people exactly where they can go and break the law with impunity.

Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham have been on this story already and are urging some populist pressure. Fight the power kids. And get to church early this Sunday, it’s gonna be crowded in there.

Share the Grizzly:

Tags: amnesty, grassroots, Immigration

Trackback URI | Comments RSS