A lifelong Yankee fan last week was the first time I ever rooted for the Dodgers. Even when their home was old Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, they were “Dem Bums,” not to be followed. I take it back.
Now, the Dodgers Organization joins elected officials, family members, friends, and citizens of goodwill who are trying to do the right thing about immigrants and their families.
The team last week ejected from Stadium grounds masked federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and other Department of Homeland Security personnel. Until they got the Bum’s rush, those agents in their caravan of white vans were there to fill the unofficial Trump Administration quota of deporting 1 million undocumented migrants per year.
When the coast-to-coast crackdown was announced last January, officials claimed they were targeting criminal illegal aliens. They highlighted cases like the violent MS-13 gang banger, aka “Antichrist,” recently sentenced to 55 years in prison for the machete murders of 4 young men in a Central Islip Park.
But however searing the notorious cases are, it turns out immigrants who are also criminal undesirables are either too rare or just too hard to find.
To meet the quota, the feds are rounding up aliens who, aside from their immigration status, are often hardworking, family-oriented, and law-abiding. The agents ejected from the Dodger Stadium parking lot were apparently targeting the team’s Latino fan base. They had previously hit car washes in the area and a Home Depot parking lot.
Last week, workplace raids on farm workers, hotel and hospitality businesses, schools, and courthouses triggered widespread unrest nationwide, but especially in L.A., which is 42% Latino.
The tumult and violence were attributed to “far-left agitators” who in the words of Vice President J.D. Vance on Saturday, “needed to be stopped.”
To do that, President Trump nationalized the California National Guard (which a federal appeals court said Friday he had the right to do), as well as thousands of active-duty Marines. When the initial violence died down after a curfew was declared in Los Angeles, the consensus was that the administration’s reaction was overkill.
But I agree with the V.P. on one thing. Along with migrant families, cops and other law enforcement are collateral damage in the current crisis. From the haughty Hamptons to the streets of N.Y., Chicago and L.A. cops are often stuck with dirty work like maintaining order when a beloved immigrant parent or child is being swept away in an immigration raid that has all the hallmarks of one of those old WWII “Show Me Your Papers” movies.
The vice president acknowledged last Saturday that a “morale problem” exists among immigration law enforcement. He is right. Some of my best friends are cops. ICE agents are cops, too, admittedly with a more specialized role than a crime-busting cop on the beat.
Yet, I cannot imagine my neighborhood cops wearing masks. Why hide? Fear? Embarrassment? The task they have been given cannot be honorable if they must do it in disguise.
