By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgann.bsky.social
You may have seen the video of Immigration and Customs Enforcement “officers” ripping people out of a car the other day on Phoenixville. Over the last few months, we’ve seen this all around the county, especially hitting our agricultural sector.
What we saw on video this week was horrifying, probably illegal and just another day in Lawless Donald Trump’s presidency.
ICE clearly needs to be disbanded and replaced with the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) which was far from perfect, but not a bunch of law-breaking, jackbooted thugs like ICE has become.
And yes, I could list dozens of issues of why this is a problem — thankfully, many others have — but I want to highlight one major problem is this causing.
With ICE running rampage across Chester County, why should or would we be able to trust our local police?
It sucks, most of our local police are the good guys and they play by the rules.
They don’t ignore the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and illegally enter homes and businesses without a judicial warrant (the warrants ICE use are basically like if a police officer wrote out their own — not signed by a judge or evaluated for probable cause as the law requires).
ICE has attacked bystanders — US citizens over which they have little to no jurisdiction (standing there recording video is not obstruction of justice — it merely records what happened, important as ICE officers and leadership have constantly lied about their conduct).
Sadly, with the arrests of journalists, citizens and legal residents we can no longer trust anyone in uniform. We’re not seeing local police serve and protect law-abiding residents from ICE — so why should we trust them?
The short form: we probably can’t — and for most of us it means avoiding law enforcement and disengaging with them as much as possible.
But there will be a scenario where local police come under literal fire while making a traffic stop or a wellness check because those involved can’t be sure who or what is pulling them over and that they might just kill them, as we’ve seen in Minnesota and elsewhere. Such folks might, understandably, be in “shoot-first, ask questions later” mode — which will put our local police at risk. Additionally, in such a situation, police might become more trigger happy, justifiably worried that their life is in danger.
Again, I want to repeat this: the vast majority of police are the good guys — where police works best, they’re part of the community. ICE lack training and clearly respect for the law and constitution — police officers get a lot of training on deescalation and calming, and most are smart enough not to run around like a bull in a china closet.
But the behavior of ICE changes everything — we’re rapidly moving toward a “Wild-West” situation where no one is safe. Carrying a weapon, as we saw in Minneapolis could get you killed.
ICE is ignoring the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, 14th and 15th Amendments — in short ICE is a criminal gang and they will eventually come for you or someone you love, regardless of where you were born. They are rapidly devolving into a Stasi-like Secret Police.
Every ICE officer needs to lose their job and face criminal charges if they were involved in illegal acts. The same is true for Donald Trump: he is a criminal thug — 34 felony convictions already — with hundreds more likely if he ever leaves office (he doesn’t plan to do so).
We need local governments — City & Borough councils and township supervisors to make clear to their local police that they must hold ICE accountable for illegal acts in their municipality.. We need our police to protect and serve, not enable lawless ICE thugs.
Yes, I get that is a tough call — there will be retribution by Trump and his criminal thugs at some point. Heck, my writing this dramatically increases the odds of being arrested myself, just for expressing an opinion on these pages.
If we don’t stand up now, we may not have the chance later. We’ve seen in so many other countries how this goes, detention camps, neighbors informing on neighbors everyone living in a culture of fear.
We can stop this now. We can — as Philadelphia has — make it clear to ICE that it must operate under the law and Constitution or face arrest.
It is time for courage. It is time for honor. It is time.
