Democracy speaks
Critics should not ‘shut up’ about nation’s broken immigration system.
Yessir, General! Sir! What were we thinking? Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or … “Shut up!” We’re quoting Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, one of Donald Trump’s coterie of military tough guys who revert occasionally to their Pattonesque persona. Trump, perhaps recalling his military-school youth, is no doubt thrilled. The rest of us, citizens of a fractious democracy where debate and disagreement are patriotic duties, need to remind these guys that they’re no longer in uniform. Their wish is not our command.
Kelly was aiming his tough-guy directive at lawmakers and other critics of Trump’s noxious new deportation policies, which include unleashing aggressive immigration and border security forces intent on apprehending law-abiding residents in their homes, where they work and in public spaces.
“If lawmakers do not like the laws that we enforce, that we are charged to enforce, that we are sworn to enforce — then they should have the courage and skill to change those laws,” Kelly said in a speech on Tuesday to an audience of diplomatic and national security officials at George Washington University. “Otherwise, they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.”
Kelly previously has said that immigration officers are not targeting those without criminal records. Either he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or he’s not telling the truth to the American people. A recent Washington Post analysis found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of non-criminals have doubled under Trump. Anecdotal evidence from around the country, including here in Houston, underscores that analysis.
“This administration is purposefully targeting formerly ‘low priority’ undocumented immigrants who are deeply rooted in American families and American communities,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice Education Fund, in an interview with the Chronicle’s Kevin Diaz. Sharry’s organization is an advocacy group for immigrants.
Sharry also took issue with Kelly’s tone: “We live in a democracy, Secretary Kelly. We pay our taxes, our taxes pay your salary, and you are accountable to the people who make up our nation. Telling us to ‘shut up and support the men and women on the front lines’ is not how it works, even in the Trump era.”
Kelly was right about one thing: Lawmakers should have “the courage and skill” to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. They don’t. For years, they’ve cowered in their Capitol fox holes, rising up occasionally to bray about border threats and then ducking down again when it comes time to craft safe, reasonable and humane laws determining who comes to this country and who stays. What’s frustrating is that the system is fixable, as the U.S. Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform legislation proved in 2013. That effort was stymied by the so-called House Freedom Caucus, the rump group of lawmakers opposed to any path to legalization for law-abiding undocumented immigrants.
Nothing’s going to change, Christina Sisk, an immigration scholar at the University of Houston, told the Chronicle, “because the country is in the middle of a culture war.”
Secretary Kelly presumably knows about war, but we would suggest, with all due respect, there’s something else he needs to know in his new civilian role: Critics are not going to shut up about this nation’s broken and unjust immigration system. Sir.