Where are all the 'Don't tread on me' Americans?
By: Chris Truax (The Hill)
So, what was the point of Jan. 6th, 2021? Was the Capitol building stormed because the government wasn't intrusive enough, wasn't big enough? Were the Jan. 6th rioters afraid Biden wouldn't go far enough in dismantling Constitutional rights and protections? Did the rioters want to intimidate Congress into supporting tyranny?
There seems to be a lot of explaining to do.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
There's a reason for what we are seeing in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the U.S. It's the result of the Trump administration's belief that illegal immigrants don't have the same constitutional rights as the rest of us.
As President Trump himself put it, "If people come into our country illegally there's a different standard." The general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security even claims there is "broad judicial recognition that illegal aliens aren't entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens."
That's factually incorrect. There is no such broad judicial recognition. But it also completely misunderstands the point of having constitutional rights in the first place.
If you could somehow magically determine, with perfect accuracy, who was guilty of a crime and where they had hidden the evidence, you wouldn't need the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures. Nor would you need due process, which protects people against being arbitrarily punished by the government.
But we lack such magical powers, and so we have a package of constitutional rights that we created to keep the government from becoming oppressive.
These rights aren't just a defense against an intentionally tyrannical government; they also protect us against well-meaning bureaucrats. As Judge Alex Kozinski put it, "Liberty — the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government — is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark."
So is getting immigrant criminals off the street a justification for ICE's behavior? Constitution says no. Of course, some immigrants are criminals who shouldn't be on the streets. Some Americans are criminals who shouldn't be on the streets either. Nonetheless, we have a Constitution that prevents police from roving those streets and demanding that people present their papers, or from breaking into someone's house without probable cause and a warrant signed by a judge.
Those rights don't exist to protect criminals. They exist to protect innocent people. And it is innocent people who suffer when those rights are ignored, whether the government is hunting criminals or immigrants.
Just ask the innocent, elderly American citizen dragged into the snow, half naked, after ICE broke into his house.
Let me put it another way. Over 250 years, we have carefully evolved rules for law enforcement that protect our constitutional rights and protect ordinary Americans from abuse by the government that is supposed to protect them. In 2023, there were 22,830 murders committed in the U.S. The best estimate is that about 250 of those were committed by illegal immigrants.
It's obvious that garden-variety murderers are a far greater threat to Americans' safety — almost a hundred times greater — than illegal alien murderers are. But we would never agree to discarding the Fourth Amendment and due process to enforce regular criminal law. The whole idea is offensive.
So why is the Trump administration demanding that we abandon constitutional rights to go after people in the country illegally?
I'm not upset because Trump is deporting criminals. When I look at what's going on in Minneapolis and elsewhere, I see law-abiding American citizens being tear-gassed and beaten. I see masked men roaming the streets and demanding to see people's papers. I see people gunned down for no good reason at all.
I see people who have every right to be here swept up and detained. I see ICE and the federal government wilfully ignoring court orders meant to prevent injustices in individual cases.
Alex Pretti and Renee Good are just the tip of the iceberg. While American citizen Miramar Martinez wasn't killed, new evidence released on Tuesday shows that her shooting in Chicago by federal agents last October was even more shocking in that it might have been planned in advance.
All this isn't just a threat to illegal immigrants. It is a threat to all of us.
I have a challenge to all the patriots out there who fly "Don't Tread on Me" flags and talk about upholding the Constitution. This is your moment. You've spent your entire lives talking about resisting tyranny. Now it is happening right before your eyes.
Pretti was not just a cosplay patriot. He dared to exercise the First and Second Amendment rights you claim to believe in. And they killed him for it.
What are you going to do about it?
All this can still be stopped before it is too late. And you are the ones to stop it, because Trump will listen to you in a way that he won't listen to anyone else.
If you oppose tyranny, the people of Minneapolis are your brothers and sisters in arms, regardless of what you think about immigration. They are standing up to a government that has gone too far. They are putting their lives on the line to do it. Are you going to stand with them, or was it all just talk?
Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain's primary campaign in 2008.
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The new motto for Trump Republicans has become "give me tyranny or give me death". The problem with retribution is that what goes around, comes around. And when retribution comes for Trump Republicans, their Constitutional protections will be gone.
Enjoy the moment because it won't last long.
They don't oppose tyranny, Nerm. This is what they voted for and they are as happy as pigs in mud