Criminals or Heroes?

The Republicans are claiming to be the party of law and order in the ICE raids issue. They consider Trump’s policy to arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, by any means possible, to be the law.

Courts that rule against Trump’s policy, declaring for example the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles to be illegal, are denounced as “lawfare”, – unelected judges trying to thwart the policy of the elected president who has a “strong mandate” to deal with “illegal immigrants”. As an aside, recent polls show that the majority of Americans do not support the Trump regime’s handling of immigrants (nor any other issue for that matter) – so much for Trump’s "strong mandate". And people who try to protect immigrants from the illegal raids, including judges, mayors, and members of Congress, are arrested and charged with obstructing justice. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border Czar”, warned that anyone, including judges, who obstructs Trump’s immigration agenda will be prosecuted.

Now what if the tables were turned. Suppose that President Biden had issued an executive order to outlaw the possession of assault rifles. The courts ruled against the order, but that didn’t stop him. He then sent the National Guard into Republican states to raid any home, without a warrant, that they suspected might have such now-illegal weapons. And to seize any such weapons they found and arrest the entire families in the home, sending them to offshore prisons. The courts ruled that this use of the National Guard, and the deporting of citizens, are both illegal but that didn’t stop the president.

Do you suppose that Republican judges, mayors and members of Congress might oppose such actions and perhaps try to protect their people? And loudly protest such actions as “police state” terrorism? Of course they would – and so they should; most if not all Democrats would as well. But now people who obstructed the President’s agenda would be heroes, not criminals, in the eyes of Republicans.

Now, for the record, I don’t believe for a second that Biden would do any of that. When the courts stopped his student loan forgiveness order he backed off and found another, legal, route and did what he could.

So, people who try to obstruct illegal actions are either criminals or heroes, depending on whether you support the policy behind the actions.

Sources:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/noem-the-fbi-and-trump-just-sent-3ee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etgb6Iy6Otg

Update June 27

The three progressive justices on the US Supreme Court thought of the same analogy. Writing a dissent to a 6-3 ruling limiting court injunctions on birthright citizenship, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said: 

“The majority ignores entirely whether the president's executive order is constitutional, instead focusing only on the question whether federal courts have the equitable authority to issue universal injunctions. Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case. 

"No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship". 

Source: 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/scotus-opinion-trump-casa-1.7572403