By CHRIS POWELL
Some Democratic elected officials in Connecticut say there was an immigration law enforcement atrocity in Bridgeport this month.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a man as he waited in his car with his son at a bus stop for the boy’s ride to high school in New Haven. The man was taken away for deportation.
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U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he was “deeply disturbed” by the incident, adding: “I am just absolutely aghast that once again children have been victimized and traumatized by ICE’s brutality and abject cruelty.”
State Attorney General William Tong said: “No child should be separated from his parent while waiting for a school bus. These kinds of reckless and indiscriminate arrests traumatize kids and do nothing to make our communities safer.”
Bridgeport state Sen. Herron Gaston concurred: “No child should ever have to watch his father be taken away. This man is a law-abiding resident.”
Bridgeport state Rep. Christopher Rosario also called the arrest “traumatizing.”
Unfortunately the officials were not challenged to defend their outrage in the face of the facts of the arrest.
According to ICE, the arrested man is from El Salvador, entered the United States illegally on May 9, 2005, and was ordered deported by an immigration court on Oct. 6 that year. All that was more than 20 years ago.
Since the man’s son is only 16, the man seems to have been indifferent to the danger of starting a family without obtaining authorization to be in the country. Of course like millions of other illegal immigrants he fairly had the impression that the United States was usually negligent about enforcing immigration law. Even so, having been ordered removed five years earlier, he knew his presence in the country was illegal when his son was conceived.
It’s not as if the ICE agents ripped the man out of his car and left the boy there alone. The agency said officers let the man call his wife to collect their son and stayed with the boy until she arrived.
This isn’t what Senator Blumenthal calls “brutality and abject cruelty.” It’s more like decent, responsible behavior.
Attorney General Tong and Senator Gaston say no child should ever have to watch his parent being taken away. But such arrests often happen in Connecticut in cases involving state law. Hundreds of men in prison in Connecticut have children. Apparently Tong and Gaston haven’t noticed that accompaniment by a child is no exemption from arrest. Will they propose such an exemption when the General Assembly reconvenes next year?
Senator Gaston says the illegal immigrant was “law-abiding.” But he had been ordered removed 21 years ago precisely because he was not law-abiding.
Representative Rosario is right that such incidents can be “traumatizing,” but then all lawbreaking and law enforcement can be. A good way to avoid such trauma is not to break the law.
Unfortunately no news organizations seem to have asked the elected officials who deplored the Bridgeport incident to explain exactly what should be done with an illegal immigrant who defies a removal order for 20 years. Should such people be automatically pardoned, at least if they have created a family?
Should such a standard apply in cases of other kinds of lawbreaking or just immigration lawbreaking?
Of course millions more illegal immigrants remain in the country. Should they all be amnestied with the euphemism Democrats call “a path to citizenship”?
Should there be no limit on the number of people to be admitted to or allowed to stay in the country without ever being examined for safety and suitability?
While every day brings murders and other serious crimes committed by illegal immigrants, should they be excused because illegal immigrants on average may be more law-abiding than the native-born? Should that average really be consolation to those who have lost loved ones?
Deploring painful situations is easy. Getting real about them can be hard, and elected officials won’t have to get real about them if journalism doesn’t press them to.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 