Loading...
Loading...

Trump, immigration, and ICE by Lou Rockwell.
Do illegal immigrants have the right to stay in America
or can they be deported?
Of course, they do not have such a right.
Furthermore, as Brian McClanahan of the Abaville Institute
has pointed out, the Supreme Court has in numerous cases
ruled that control of immigration is a federal matter,
not one under state jurisdiction.
You can argue that these precedents are wrong,
but that is the law as it exists today.
That being so, if progressive governors
like Tim Walls of Minnesota oppose the removal
of illegal immigrants, they cannot block
immigration enforcement within their state.
They have no obligation to use state officials
to help ICE agents.
And if demonstrators against ICE attack agents
or try by force to free those they take into ICE custody,
state officials must arrest them.
For some conservatives, that is the end of the matter.
The demonstrators are a raging mob who have only themselves
to blame if some of them are injured or killed.
Thus, writing in the spectator, Dan McCarthy, says,
the Border Patrol officer or officers
who shot Alex Pretty might have been wrong,
but the presumptions of civilization
are on law enforcement side.
If there is violence between officers and someone else,
officers have the superior right to use force.
The attempt to negate laws through mob actions
and systematic harassment campaigns,
which is what the anti-ice activists have been conducting,
are wrong in themselves, whether or not the laws
are entirely right.
This is because, as everyone knows,
America is not a totalitarian society.
Elections do matter, and immigration enforcement
is necessary for any country.
It's a basic form of the rule of law.
It is not fascism.
I believe that this view is entirely mistaken.
The ICE agents have acted in an arbitrary and violent way,
inimical to the rule of law, as if they were free to injure
or even kill anybody who gets in their way.
Jim Bovard aptly compares the killing of Alex Pretty
to the killing of Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge by an FBI sniper.
He says,
On Saturday, federal agents in Minneapolis
killed protester Alex Pretty,
shooting him in the back 10 times
after they had taken away the pistol he legally carried.
White House deputy chief Stephen Miller quickly settled the issue.
A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement
and the official Democratic count sides with the terrorists.
A few hours after Pretty was killed,
I commented on Twitter X.
How many of the Trump supporters cheering the killing
of the Minneapolis demonstrator today would also cheer
for the FBI sniper,
killing Vicki Weaver in her cabin door at Ruby Ridge in 1992.
This outraged plenty of Trump supporters,
but the parallels between the federal killings in 1992
and on Saturday are striking.
Trump supporters insisted there was no comparison
between Pretty's death and Vicki Weaver
because Weaver was unarmed,
but Vicki Weaver had a 0.380 gun on her side under her sweater.
When the FBI sniper blew her head off
as she was holding her 10 month old baby.
Neither she nor Pretty was brandishing
before getting shot to death by the feds.
Trump officials justified killing Pretty
because he had a pistol,
even though vast numbers of conservatives
have brought pistols and rifles to protest in recent years.
Similarly, the rule of engagement for FBI snipers
was any armed male adult observed
in the vicinity of the Weaver cabin could and should be killed.
In a federal appeals court ruling,
Judge Alex Kaczynski denounced that rule
as a new James Bond agent, 007 standard
for the use of deadly force against American citizens.
After Pretty was shot more than 10 times,
DHS Secretary Kristi Nome said he was a domestic terrorist
who sought to inflict maximum damage on individuals
and to kill law enforcement.
Nome announced that Pretty approached border patrol officers
with a 9 millimeter semi-automatic pistol.
The officers attempted to disarm this individual
but the suspect reacted violently.
Videos of the killing show that Pretty had a cell phone
in his hand, not a gun,
before federal agents knocked him down
and began beating and pistol whipping him.
Trump's DHS considers videotaping agents
to be the equivalent of a hostile attack
that justifies a violent federal response.
Some Trump supporters declared that Pretty deserved his fate
because he intentionally chose to place himself
in deadly peril by purportedly assaulting federal agents.
In both the Minneapolis and Ruby Ridge cases,
federal officials claimed a right to preemptively kill
their targets and then cover up the killings.
After killing Pretty, DHS officials seized cell phones
of bystanders and blocked Minnesota state law
enforcement officials from conducting any investigation
at the crime scene.
DHS's apparent cover up was so brazen
that a Trump-nominated federal judge issued
an emergency order on Saturday near midnight
ordering DHS not to destroy further evidence.
It remains to be seen how much honest evidence
will be permitted to be disclosed.
Unlike most police departments,
most ICE and border patrol agents
don't wear body cameras to videotape their shootings.
Congressional Republicans following the Trump White House
lead blocked efforts by Democrats
to require those federal agents to wear body cams.
Many Trump supporters would vigorously condemn
the FBI killing of Vicki Weaver nowadays,
but the issue is not how many people disapprove
of her killing after the cover up collapsed.
Trump officials are already dropping a cloak of sanctimony
over the latest federal shooting in Minneapolis.
According to Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino,
Pretty was only there to kill people
and it was a good job for our law enforcement
in taking him down before he was able to do that.
This standard would preemptively justify
the killing any individual who the Fed's label
as a threat after shooting him.
Will we ever learn the rules of engagement
that DHS agents are now using
to shoot American civilians?
Will we ever see the possibly panic texts
and emails from DHS bosses in Minnesota
to the Trump White House about another
bloody public relations fiasco?
Will we ever see the evidence
that federal agents seized after Pretty was perforated?
How can anyone who is paying attention,
approve of Pretty's killing,
despite all the false and far-fetched federal claims
regarding his demise?
How can freedom survive if so many Americans
blindly believe any proclamation
by government officials and political hacks?
There was nothing illegal about Pretty bringing a gun
into an anti-ice demonstration.
Gun rights groups emphasized that Pretty was legally permitted
to carry a firearm under Minnesota law
and that carrying a gun into a demonstration
or protest is not prohibited by state law.
Minnesota does not have a specific ban
on firearms at protests.
So carrying a weapon, even a loaded one,
was lawful for someone with a valid carry permit.
The Second Amendment protects an individual's right
to bear arms even while attending a demonstration
and that right doesn't disappear
just because someone is observing
or recording law enforcement activity.
This is a foundational point for many gun rights
organizations responding to the controversy.
They pushed back strongly against federal officials
comments.
For example, an assistant US attorney's post saying,
people approaching law enforcement with a gun
could be legally justified.
Targets drew criticism.
Groups like the National Rifle Association, NRA,
called such statements dangerous and wrong
asserting that mere lawful possession
shouldn't be equated with justification
for use of deadly force.
Others, including the gun owners of America,
reiterated that federal authorities
must not infringe on the right to bear arms while protesting.
Under the US Constitution, Congress
has primary authority to make immigration law.
Article 1 gives Congress the power
to establish a uniform rule of naturalization
and regulate borders.
The executive branch, including agencies like ICE,
is tasked with enforcing those laws.
This distinction is central to debates about executive actions
that significantly alter how immigration law is applied.
A president cannot simply rewrite immigration law.
He can issue executive orders and set enforcement priorities,
but those must be rooted in statutes passed by Congress.
Scholars often point to the Administrative Procedure Act,
APA, separation of powers principles,
and the non-delegation doctrine, when assessing
whether aggressive executive enforcement
oversteps congressional authority.
A number of scholars emphasize that immigration lawmaking
belongs to Congress.
And they are skeptical of executive actions
that effectively reshape immigration policy
through enforcement choices.
Peter Margulis, who teaches at Roger Williams University,
is a leading immigration law scholar.
He argues that broad enforcement initiatives
risk collapsing the distinction between enforcing
and making law.
He is critical of executive immigration policies
under both parties that bypass Congress
and rely on sweeping discretion.
He emphasizes that the Administrative Procedure Act,
APA, limits, and the need for statutory grounding.
Shobha Sivaprasad-Wadia, who teaches at Penn State,
is an expert on prosecutorial discretion in immigration.
While she accepts some executive discretion,
she is warned that unbounded discretion
can undermine rule of law constraints
and congressional supremacy.
She is critical of opaque enforcement searches
and mass operations lacking clear standards.
Other scholars focus on ICE's reliance
on administrative warrants.
David A. Martin, who teaches at the University of Virginia,
is a former DHS general counsel
and respected constitutional scholar.
He has written critically about ICE's use
of administrative warrants for home entries,
emphasizing the constitutional vulnerability
under the Fourth Amendment and argues
that immigration enforcement does not create
a Fourth Amendment exception.
Stephen Legomsky, who teaches at Washington University
in St. Louis, is one of the most cited immigration law
scholars and is a long-time critic
of aggressive interior enforcement tactics.
He emphasizes that civil immigration violations
do not justify criminal-style enforcement methods
and has warned that ICE practices often erode due process
norms.
Other scholars argue that large-scale federal immigration
operations can encroach on state sovereignty
and effectively turn immigration enforcement
into general policing.
Ilya Somin, who teaches at George Mason University,
is a libertarian constitutional scholar.
He is critical of both sanctuary state coercion
and aggressive federal immigration enforcement
and argues that federal immigration enforcement
cannot override anti-commandering principles.
He is skeptical of using immigration authority
as a pretext for broad domestic policing.
Erwin Kemerinsky, who is the dean of the UC Berkeley Law
School, is one of the most prominent constitutional scholars
in the US.
He has argued that immigration enforcement must still
respect federalism limits and individual constitutional rights
and frequently criticizes executive actions
that evade congressional checks or judicial oversight.
Other scholars focus on equal protection
and discriminatory enforcement, often linking ICE
practices to broader constitutional concerns.
Jennifer Shaqqon, who teaches at UC Berkeley,
has written extensively on immigration enforcement.
She is critical of executive-driven enforcement strategies
that lack transparency and accountability.
Kevin R. Johnson, who teaches at UC Davis,
is a former dean and immigration law scholar.
He is a longtime critic of immigration enforcement policies
that undermine equal protection and due process,
especially for lawful residents and citizens,
mistakenly targeted.
Let's do everything we can to ensure
that the rule of law and constitutional government is restored.
That is vastly more important than expelling illegal immigrants.
For more content like this, visit mises.org.
