As a Washington D.C. cop on patrol in some of our country’s most dangerous neighborhoods, I have experienced being set up by a violent crowd. I know what it is like to be pummeled with bricks and bottles thrown by mob attendees. We were uniformed cops outnumbered and calling for back-up that always arrived with police sirens blaring from the distance, then getting closer and closer. Then police cars screeching to a grinding halt, car doors flung open and blue lights illuminating the night sky. As we had requested, the calvary had arrived.
Similarly, ICE and Border cops are under attack literally; however, when they call for back-up, local police seldom come because their law-breaking political leaders have instructed them not to defend federal police officers. Our President realizing this unusual and perverted shortcoming, has attempted to rightly use National Guards troops to defend federal cops. Yet there are the detractors who assert no emergency is afoot, although in Chicago, federal agents enforcing immigration laws were fired upon only days ago.
I assert that federal cops have families and lead lives just like you and me. Those of the immigration enforcement ilk have been tasked with enforcing our country’s immigration laws. They are doing their job. Sadly, along the way, Democrats have re-defined law breaking in such a way that illegal presence in the U.S. is not a crime joined with creating a wave of anti-police sentiment unlike we have ever seen in America. The recent acquittal of the man, who on film, threw a sandwich at a federal uniformed officer, illuminates the crisis that has resulted from elected democrats villainizing law enforcement. It won’t be long before the troublemakers do not distinguish between federal and local cops. A local cop will be struck with a brick or shot and killed by a person who believes he has a right to frustrate immigration enforcement.
It is unacceptable in a civilized society that politicians use their taxpayer funded platform to encourage people to physically attack and harm police officers. The extremist politicians –the likes of AOC, Gavin Newsome and J.B. Pritzker, joined by Chicago’s Brandon Johnson– would throw projectiles at federal police officers if given the opportunity; however, instead, they encourage Americans and illegals to sabotage federal law enforcement efforts to apprehend people illegally in the U.S.
8 U.S. Code § 1325 represents that illegal entry into the U.S. is a crime. Local officials and their cops have zero law on their side that says they may look the other way in the face of reasonable suspicion or probable cause of a subject’s illegal presence in the United States. Front and center ICE and Border Patrol. They have a job to do and the villainization of them by politicians through hate speech –calling them NAZIs– joined with arming rioters with provisions to physically harm police officers, is not protected speech under the 1st Amendment. To frustrate law enforcement in this way, including harboring a wanted person, by example a person wanted for being in the United States illegally, is a crime not a legal 1st Amendment foray.
On the state level, every U.S. state makes it a crime to harbor fugitives. If a person is illegally in the United States –to include having overstayed a visa, he\she is a fugitive —a wanted person— under federal law, for violations of federal immigration law.
Whoever harbors a criminal sought by federal authorities, by telling him\her where to hide or through providing shelter, is too guilty of a state crime, since every state in America defines harboring of a criminal as violation of a state’s penal code. Imagine what would be the quality of life in the United States if there were no penalties for harboring law breakers, or accountability for those people who form human barriers to prevent police from taking a person into custody. Therefore, this widespread cockamamie notion, informed by an injudicious interpretation of the First Amendment, that politicians and their constituents are permitted to impede federal law enforcement (as in to harbor illegals) –is a legal fiction. This is because Article VI of the United States constitution states that the federal government’s laws “shall be the supreme Law of the Land” (U.S. Const., art. VI, cl. 2). We call this edict the “supremacy clause.” It reads in part [federal law] “shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby…”
Let’s face it –it is the barrage of insidious messaging from Democratic party politicians that has incited the left leaning masses to take up methods (and sometimes firearms) to counter federal law enforcement. Governor Pritzker comfortably describes himself as the “happy warrior” leading the resistance. AOC’s approach includes advice on how to frustrate federal law enforcement. Since the Supremacy Clause imbues the Federal Government with “a decided advantage in [a] delicate balance” between federal and state sovereigns; therefore, the next time a mayor tells his police officers not to assist federal law enforcement officers in apprehending a wanted person, that official should be criminally charged. Similarly, when a politician uses his position to incite violence against federal police officers, he\she too should be criminally charged.
By Christopher Cooper, Esq., PhD.
