Having successfully isolated Department of Homeland Security funding from the rest of the government’s appropriations, Senate Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are now threatening to defund the entire department unless their renewed demands for judicial warrants for immigration enforcement, no more masking for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, a use of force standard and a bar on alleged racial profiling are given into.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths were tragic and should not have happened — because nobody should be getting in the way of federal law enforcement efforts, creating a dangerous situation for themselves and for officers.
They were neither victims of racial profiling nor non-judicial warrants, they were violent protesters who were assaulting federal officers and obstructing federal immigration enforcement — two things not protected by the First Amendment. They’d be alive today if their leaders had not encouraged their own people to act as human shields for illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country.
Sanctuary cities and states are a fantasy that Good and Pretti radicalized themselves to protect — a false belief that the federal government has no right or power to enforce federal immigration laws Congress passed under Article I, Section 8. But Article VI of the Constitution clearly tells all civic-minded Americans that the Constitution and all laws made pursuant to it are the “supreme law of the land”.
They sacrificed their lives for something that’s not even real. It’s really sad.
Good and Pretti were not even subject to deportation, they were U.S. citizens and thus were not even the targets of any DHS or ICE investigation.
Therefore, none of the Democrats’ demands would have saved their lives, and even any use of force standard will still need to uphold constitutional norms for officers to be able to defend themselves, with lethal force if necessary, when their lives are endangered.
In fact, police officers have a well-established constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment to defend their lives with reasonable (including deadly) force when facing an imminent threat to their lives. Whereas, while civilians have the same right to protect themselves from one another, no civilian has a similar right to use force against a police officer. When they say “hands up” or “step out of the car” the only safe option is to surrender.
That will always be true no matter what law Congress passes in the limited context of the DHS funding bill. Democrats want to relitigate what the Constitution commands. It’s absurd. It’s called a monopoly on violence for a reason. The police have an obligation to enforce the laws with force if necessary. It’s right in the word.
So, sure codify the constitutional use of force standard, and do it for all federal officers, and make it clear that all officers of the executive branch have a right to defend their lives with force from an imminent danger. The Supreme Court has already uphold these standards and so Congress cannot go beyond that in some sort of nihilistic national suicide pact.
And now Senate Democrats want to martyr Good and Pretti’s deaths by treating them like pawns in a chess match — a means to an end — all the while ignoring the elephant in the room: Sanctuary cities and states that encouraged citizens to become deputies in some kind of neo-confederate, nullification fantasy that became deadly.
They even want ICE agents to be forced to show their faces while on duty when there active terroristic threats doxing agents and endangering their lives and the lives of their families. Why not make them where bullseyes on their uniforms, too? How anti-police do you have to be to demand Congress pass a law that explicitly endangers officers’ lives?
What Democrats are countenancing today is not merely defunding ICE, DHS and the police — it is disarming them. No more executive powers. And to surrender U.S. sovereignty to the whims of violent criminal alien gangs, cartels and other thugs. Democrats apparently want criminal havens in the cities they are responsible for governing. Why would anyone want to do that, let alone stick in the funding bill? It’s nuts.
Well, President Trump isn’t going to let them. 2024 decided that. That includes judicial warrants, these are practically a non-starter and they’re not even necessary as there is already adequate judicial review of deportations, which take place in the hundreds of thousands annually. Policing U.S. borders and protecting American sovereignty from invasion is primarily an executive branch responsibility. If invaders come across the border, the President can just use the military to blow them up. No warrants.
As for Congress, President Donald Trump would almost certainly veto legislation that goes too far to defund and disarm the federal government from enforcing immigration laws, and Democrats simply lack the votes to override his veto. Now, we can go through this whole thing all over again, defund DHS in a shutdown, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — all to discover that Democrats don’t have the votes and don’t have White House to do what they’re asking.
Or they can just pass the DHS funding bill, codify the constitutional standard for the use of force by police, claim “victory” even though their agitators still won’t be able to run over officers with their cars, or pass another continuing resolution, and let’s get back to the business of the American people. If the American people vote for anarchy later, I suppose that’s their problem, but for now, we have an American President who is going to enforce the law.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government.
