Chris Powell: Illegal-immigration backers in Conn. don’t get critical questions

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Immigration-law enforcement agents must be compelled, by congressional action or court order, to identify themselves conspicuously during arrests, to display their badges, and to make prompt public reports identifying the people they have detained, why they have been detained, and where they are being held. A free country cannot allow secret arrests. The necessity of such accountability in government goes back centuries to the Magna Carta.

Democrats in Congress should press this issue instead of simply decrying all immigration-law enforcement. Most of the country will agree, and Republicans in Congress who disagree will risk being exposed as totalitarians.

Police in Connecticut already are obliged by law to follow similar procedure, though they sometimes neglect to report arrests promptly and news organizations fail to notice.

But the greater failure of Connecticut journalism lately involves its reporting of complaints against immigration law enforcement. Reporters can't be blamed when they can't reach or get responses from immigration law enforcers, but they can  be blamed when they quote officials, activists, and others in the immigration controversy without posing critical questions.

The recent arrest by immigration agents of a woman as she was driving her children to school in New Haven provoked outrage. Some of it verged on hysteria, like the statement issued by Mayor Justin Elicker.

"To arrest a mother in front of her two young children while taking them to school is simply unconscionable," the mayor said.

So what is the appropriate time to arrest and detain someone with children who is suspected of being in the country illegally? Will such a suspect necessarily cooperate in scheduling her arrest and detention, or might she flee instead? Do New Haven's own police always give notice to the targets of their arrest warrants?

Mayor Elicker wasn't asked.

He continued: "We condemn this deplorable act of family separation and call upon the Trump administration to stop its inhumane approach and cruel tactics."

But don't arrests in New Haven and elsewhere routinely separate people from their children, or are children brought to jail with their parents? 

The mayor wasn't asked.

"New Haven," the mayor said, "is a welcoming city for all, and our immigrant neighbors are a part of our New Haven family."

Does New Haven really welcome legal and illegal immigrants, the well-intentioned and the ill-intentioned, and the self-supporting and the dependent alike? Does New Haven distinguish among them, or is that properly the work of immigration authorities? Or should no one do that work and should the nation's borders be opened again? 

 

Mayor Elicker concluded: "New Haven will continue to stand up for our residents and our values, and we will continue fight back with every resource available to us against the Trump administration's reckless immigration policies."

What exactly does "every resource available" mean? Even as the mayor was so upset about that immigration arrest, New Haven's school system was facing a deficit of $16.5 million and was preparing to lay off scores of employees, and the chronic absenteeism rate of its high school students stood at 50 percent.

Since New Haven can hardly take care of itself, how can it afford to be a "sanctuary city," accepting, housing, concealing, and trying to educate unlimited numbers of illegal immigrants? And since state government covers so much of New Haven's expenses, how can Connecticut afford to let the city assume unlimited liabilities like these?

Nor were compelling questions posed the other week amid outrage in Meriden about the immigration agents’ arrest and detention of a city high school student and his father a few days before the boy's graduation. 

The two were reported to have been arrested at a scheduled meeting with immigration authorities, so presumably they knew there was something wrong about their presence in the country.

Protesters in Meriden chanted that they want immigration authorities to get out of Connecticut. But wouldn't that leave the borders open again? Is that what the protesters want?

Though they were surrounded by journalists, the protesters were never asked.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many year (CPowell@cox.net). 

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