By CHRIS POWELL
Nothing seems to upset Democrats in Connecticut more than arrests for illegal immigration.
For years the Democrats were indifferent to millions of illegal entries into the country, figuring that while illegal immigrants might drive down wages for the less skilled and drive up the costs of housing, social services, and schools, at least illegal immigrants would concentrate in Democratic-leaning congressional districts, cause creation of more Democratic districts, and make the U.S. House of Representatives politically uncompetitive forever without the need for gerrymandering.
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Immigration law enforcement policy under the last Democratic national administration was to overlook the gate crashers and merely to issue immigration court summonses to those caught entering the country illegally or claiming asylum, and then chuckle when the illegal entrants and asylum claimants just disappeared into the country and never showed up for their hearings.
The people whose party broke the immigration system now complain that it’s broken and that the exquisite due process of law they’d like to see with enforcement, full of distractions and appeals, is impossible if enforcement is to be even partially effective with 14 million people illegally residing in the country.
There are valid concerns about due process in many deportations. But Democrats in Connecticut aren’t really worried about due process. They would be opposed to deportations even with exquisite due process.
They made this plain with their screeching last weekend about the arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of seven employees at a car wash in Newington.
A statement issued by Newington Mayor Jon Trister, state Sen. Matthew Lesser, state Rep. Gary Turco, and other Democratic officials said: “The recent actions of ICE are designed to intimidate and terrorize immigrants and their families, and we will not stand idly by. As community leaders, we stand united with Newington’s immigrant communities. Our town has been and will remain a place where families are welcome and where neighbors look out for one another.”
The mayor and others complained that ICE did not notify the town’s police department in advance of the raid at the car wash.
But if the arrests in Newington were “designed to intimidate and terrorize immigrants,” exactly how were they any different from most other immigration arrests and from many ordinary arrests by police in Connecticut and elsewhere — and how could they have been any different?
To avoid scaring illegal immigrants, should ICE have telephoned or mailed summonses to the car wash to direct the employees in question to visit an ICE office for a hearing to adjudicate their status? Of course those of the car wash employees whose presence in the country is illegal would have scattered immediately.
That would have been more Democratic pretense of enforcement policy.
ICE probably knows better than to give notice of its raids to police departments in a “sanctuary state” like Connecticut, which gives special driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and whose “Trust Act” forbids police from cooperating with immigration authorities in most instances. Indeed, ICE fairly could have presumed that Newington’s police chief would alert Mayor Trister and the mayor would tip off the car wash to thwart the raid, just as state Rep. Corey Paris, D-Stamford, tried to thwart immigration enforcement in his district a few days earlier.
After all, the statement Mayor Trister issued with the other local Democrats refused to make any distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. The statement indicated that all immigrants are welcome in Newington, legal and illegal alike — no distinctions.
That is, the Democratic position is that there should be no immigration law enforcement in Connecticut — that anyone who enters the country illegally and makes his way to Connecticut generally and Newington particularly should be exempt from immigration law enforcement until he’s caught committing a serious crime. Driver’s licenses, New Haven resident identification cards, welfare and other social services, and pious protection against immigration law enforcement await anyone who breaks in.
Connecticut seems unable to bolster its population by increasing the state’s prosperity but illegal immigration could do it.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 