Democrats sure know how to pick their “heroes.” Whether it’s violent thugs like Michael Brown and George Floyd or violent illegal alien thugs like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, leftists love to pitch big fits to support the worst members of society.
It’s all because the Left is suffering from a collective case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. If Donald Trump is doing it — in this case, enforcing immigration law — it must be authoritarian fascism. It was just last month when California left-wingers rioted to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducting deportation raids.
Such mayhem was on display again in California last week, where, as National Review reports, “Violent rioters clashed with federal immigration officers on Thursday after U.S. Customs and Border Protection raided two Southern California cannabis farms, one of which is now under investigation for child labor violations.” The raid at Glass House Farms in Camarillo found 10 illegal alien minors among the workers, and nine of those minors were unaccompanied.
Rioters didn’t just obstruct enforcement officers or throw things at them. U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli posted that the “FBI has issued a $50,000 award for information leading to the conviction of an Unknown Subject who appeared to fire a pistol at Federal Law Enforcement Officers near Camarillo.” That suspect is still at large.
“People are welcome to protest … but they can’t impede us from doing our job, that’s a felony,” border czar Tom Homan said on Friday. “What happened in California is just another example of protesters becoming criminals, and they’ve been emboldened by even members of Congress who compare ICE to Nazis.”
Left-wing rioters grew violent not because minors were being exploited for labor but because ICE officers raided a farm to rescue those minors.
Likewise, California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom saved his outrage for Donald Trump. “California prosecutes child exploiters and traffickers. Trump tear-gasses children, rips them from their parents, and deports farmworkers,” he said on social media. In another post, he added, “Trump calls me ‘Newscum’ — but he’s the real scum.”
What Newsom did not say is that the cannabis farm donated to his campaign.
California Representative Jimmy Gomez followed suit, blasting the president rather than the lawbreakers: “How many MS-13 gang members are waking up at 3 a.m. to pick strawberries? O’yeah, zero! Trump said he’d go after ‘bad hombres,’ but he’s targeting the immigrant farm workers who feed America. Either he lied — or he can’t tell the difference.”
Uh, these weren’t strawberry pickers, Mr. Gomez.
As U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott put it, “This is Newsom’s California.”
I have a few questions: Are the minors at the marijuana facility among the hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied illegal minors lost by Joe Biden’s open-borders administration? If Newsom is doing such a great job, why are children who shouldn’t even be in our country working at a weed farm? What connection is there with Mexican drug cartels, which traffic people along with drugs?
Roughly half of American farm workers are illegal because it’s much cheaper to employ them, and E-Verify, which is admittedly imperfect, is not required. Available jobs are a magnet for migrants, many of whom are genuinely hard workers and come illegally because the legal process can be so onerous. The solution seems simple: Require and improve E-Verify and cut off access to the jobs that incentivize illegal immigration.
Instead, Democrats demand to know who will pick the crops without illegals. It’s the same question their 19th-century ancestors asked about cotton and slaves.
The good news is that the Trump administration seems set on conducting more ICE raids, which are meant to send a clear message: Go home, or you will be rounded up and sent home.