Don’t Blame ICE For Enforcing Law. Blame Dems For Breaking It

It’s apparently “cruel” to enforce immigration law, at least that’s what the left has been telling us for months now.

“Trump’s cruel immigration machine is still tearing families apart,” Jordan Foster, Dylan Gee, and Dina Francesca Haynes wrote for MSNBC.

California Democrat Scott Peters said in June that ICE raids are “cruel and wasteful.” ICE agents, according to Peters, “took away four undocumented dishwashers and line cooks.”

“Instead of targeting real threats, this administration is carrying out a cruel agenda that will disrupt our economy, further erode trust in law enforcement, and sow chaos and fear,” Peters continued.

It’s the same narrative we hear time and time again, that enforcing immigration law is inherently “cruel” — not because the laws have changed, but simply because the laws are being enforced.

Gustavo Arellano — whose father was an illegal alien — wrote for the Los Angeles Times that “There’s no nice way to deport someone. But Trump’s ICE is hosting a cruelty Olympics.”

“The Trump presidency has amply proven he has no interest in skirting meanness and cruelty,” Arellano wrote. “This administration is never going to roll out the welcome mat for illegal immigrants. But the least they can do [is] deal with them as if … well, as if they are human.”

The National Immigration Law Center called ICE raids and arrests harmful.

“The only coherent policy goal of this administration when it comes to immigration is its relentless pursuit of cruelty — no matter what the cost and no matter what else is impacted. The strategy is clear: to cultivate so much suffering and fear, through real and threatened violence, that immigrants choose to abandon their communities and lives in the United States.”

But the “harm” and the “cruelty” these critics decry are nothing more than the enforcement of laws, laws that Democrats themselves ignored, which got us to this exact point.

Those who enter the country illegally are subject to removal. But Democrats spent years looking the other way entirely on all border and immigration laws, and in doing so sought to condition the American people to see enforcement of the law as “cruel.” Thus, when the law is finally applied, the left falls back on emotional blackmail.

Take for example the left’s narrative about “family separation.” Whether a person has a child or not doesn’t nullify the law that the individual violated. Every parent who enters illegally chooses to take that risk. And every parent who is deported can choose to bring his child with them. If parents choose to leave their children in America, then it’s their own personal choice to separate their family.

To give another example, consider the framing from The Chicago Tribune: “ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair … I’m a resident.’”

The purpose of such a headline is obvious: to provoke outrage. It did exactly that when writer Bryce Greene posted about the story on X: “Today I learned that ICE has this power. Welcome to the ‘show me your papers’ phase of American fascism.”

But the Chicago Tribune itself notes: “Under federal law, registered foreign nationals must carry proof of registration with them at all times. But prior to a second Trump administration, it was rarely enforced.”

In other words, the left is merely angry that the law is being enforced and is trying to manipulate the narrative to make enforcement of the law “fascist” when in reality, it’s just the text of the law.

And such enforcement is necessary because the Biden administration created this problem. For four years, Democrats allowed millions of illegal and otherwise inadmissible aliens to pour into the country. The Biden administration dismantled Trump-era protections to seal the border and stem the flow of illegal immigration and in doing so, made eventual mass deportations inevitable.

Now, when ICE enforces long-standing immigration law, the people who defended the border crisis and gave cover to the crisis are now calling enforcing the law “cruel.” But ICE isn’t the bad guy. The agency enforcing the laws Congress passed decades ago is not part of a cruelty “machine”; it is restoring law and order.

So when you see illegal aliens being deported, remember: Don’t blame the enforcement of the law; blame the Democrat lawlessness that made enforcement necessary.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2