Security Debrief

Perhaps you remember Congressman Luis Gutierrez. Last year he referred to immigration agents as Nazis. Well, to be specific, he referred to their use of “Gestapo” tactics. Gestapo is a favored phrase among some in Congress when referring to homeland security agents. Congressman Sam Farr likes to use it too.

“Terrorist” is another favorite among some politicians. Perhaps they savor the irony — calling the men and women charged with protecting America from another terrorist attack … “terrorists.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi likes that one. So does the President. Last year, on the campaign trail, then-candidate Barack Obama found himself in a brief flap for suggesting that ICE agents were “terrorizing” communities for enforcing immigration law. This prompted the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) to request an apology.

Now, like Sonny and Cher on tour, Nancy Pelosi and Luis Gutierrez have taken their act on the road as part of Gutierrez’s 17-city cross-country campaign. It’s like a bad summer concert line-up, all big  hair and pyrotechnics. Call it Pelosipalooza.

This time, speaking in San Francisco, Pelosi declared that the enforcement operations taken by ICE agents are “un-American.”

So ICE agents are … un-American Nazis who like to terrorize our communities. According to our Members of Congress, anyway. If there were any sincerity to such hysterical campaign trail talk, one might ask why Congress doesn’t disband US Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Probably because if they did so, they’d lose their favorite scapegoat for their own failure to pass workable immigration law.

As a former chief of staff at ICE, emphasis on former, I can say some things that few who still work in the government could dare say, no matter how much they are thinking it. Paraphrasing the classic Joseph Welch exchange with another loud Member of Congress, one Senator Joe McCarthy: Have you no decency, Madame, at long last? Have you no sense of decency left? Why would you attack and demoralize men and women sworn to uphold the very law that you and your colleagues in Congress made law? Instead of passing bad laws and asking law enforcement not to enforce them … why not just pass some good laws?

Last year Congress had the opportunity to institute broad reform of our immigration laws. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff — the Osama bin Laden of Speaker Pelosi’s Merry Band of DHS Terrorists — worked day and night to try to help arrive at some kind of compromise that would allow for significant reform. Congress failed. In the midst of the partisan rancor and inefficiency, no compromise could be reached. No bill made it out of Congress.

ICE agents frankly don’t care what immigration policy is passed into law by Congress.  They simply want to do their jobs — which is to enforce the law, whatever Congress deems that law to be. Unfortunately, Congress doesn’t seem to know the answer to that question. And, evidently, as long as Congress fails to make up its mind, it will continue to scapegoat ICE.

Talk about un-American.

See the video below for Pelosi’s “un-American” comments: