In all the outraged discussion about Kilmar Abrego Garcia it is true that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sent a minor filmmaker to jail for a year, blaming him for the explosive protests in the ME and ultimately for their own horrible misjudgements in Libya. It was ludicrous on its face and many outraged today turned a blind eye then.
It is also true that there was an increase in crime, especially violent and sexual crime directly attributable to illegal immigrants during the Biden administration that was shoved under the rug, denied, and explained away. Many of the outraged today said nothing about that as well, except to claim that anyone bringing this up must be racist. After all, most immigrants, even the illegal ones, did not commit violent crimes. Well, most Germans and especially Japanese did not commit violent crimes during WWII either, but we don't consider our contact with those nations at the time peaceful and non-problematic. It is a sophistical argument.
There are many examples of similar hypocrisies by Trump's critics.
However, that does not make his actions right, and we should not be evasive ourselves by pretending it does. Americans have considered our treatment and protection of law for the disfavored to be a test of our commitment to our own stated values. Do we really believe in free speech? Do we really believe in the right to a fair trial? Due process? I do not claim that illegal immigrants have the same rights as citizens, nor that the outrageous claims I see from lefty meme factories have any validity. Just normal approved standards, done well enough.
I would like to see the administration make its case better. No one should complain that an obscure case should not be elevated to such importance, because that is what always happens. Those are the cards dealt.
3 comments:
It's not that Garcia is an obscure case, but that he such an obvious case for deportation. He was here illegally. He had immigration hearings, and was considered to be an MS-13 gang member. Having MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles is persuasive. And he has domestic violence complaints.
Deporting illegal immigrants is fine, but the process should be transparent. Putting the illegal immigrant in a prison, foreign or domestic, should have a more formal process.
The noise about Garcia has drowned out the issue. Where are the Democrats on this now?
Do they oppose deporting Garcia?
or, deporting him back to his home country?
or, him being in prison in his home country?
"Having MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles is persuasive."
It might be, but this is one part of the story that I don't quite follow. The President posted a picture of his knuckle tattoos that was annotated "MS-13," but the actual tattoo is four symbols and no numbers:
Marijuana Leaf, Smiley Face with "X" eyes, Cross, Skull.
So marijuana could be "M," sure; and I guess 'smiley' could be "S." And the cross has a vertical line, so I guess that could be "1." But how do you get "3" out of the skull?
The only way I can think of is to translate into Spanish, in which "Skull" is "Calabera," and C is the third letter of the alphabet. But if that's true, shouldn't we translate all the symbols into Spanish? Marijuana/Marihuana still works, but now "Cross" is "Cruz," and also a "3" rather than a "1."
Meanwhile, "13" itself is often just employed as code for "Marijuana" because "M" is the 13th letter of the alphabet; bikers have been wearing patches that say "13" for years to suggest that. So maybe the marijuana leaf is the 13!
I don't find that part of the explanation clear or even helpful. It reminds me of listening to our vice principal in high school explain the secret drug slang we kids were supposedly using, which I'd never heard of before he started going off about it. But in his mind, using one of his alleged code words was proof of some sort of connection with drugs, even if no drugs were ever found.
"I do not claim that illegal immigrants have the same rights as citizens..."
According to a lawyer I follow on Quora, they very largely do.
https://www.quora.com/Are-illegal-migrants-in-the-United-States-protected-by-the-Fifth-and-Fourteenth-Amendments-to-the-U-S-Constitution
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