This should work out well. For the attorneys that the House Democrat strategy will require, anyway.
Furious over the indictment of LaMonica McIver for battering law-enforcement officers at an ICE facility in Newark, her fellow House Democrats plan to double down on these stunts — at least. Calling these stunts “oversight,” they plan to attempt raids at other immigration-enforcement facilities to raise the stakes and unite the caucus. What could go wrong?
We’ll get to that. Trust me:
In their fury over the Trump administration’s charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), House Democrats are planning to ramp up oversight visits to ICE facilities, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The prosecution effort has, to a shocking degree, galvanized Democrats on an issue that perennially divides them — with even the party’s centrist border hawks railing against it.
- “Members are getting increasingly angry and frustrated at the overreach, and now one of our members has been singled out for intimidation,” said House Administration Committee ranking member Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.).
- Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a moderate, told Axios: “Democrats should be all over oversight. … We have to double down. We have to do more.”
Maybe they should do less. McIver and her colleagues showed up at the ICE facility as a publicity stunt with Mayor Ras Baraka, demanding entry much as Maxine Waters and a few of her friends did at a Department of Education facility in February. Waters also demanded entry as an exercise of “oversight,” but members of Congress do not have the right to enter federal facilities without permission from the executive branch (and vice versa, for that matter). That is a matter of law; members of Congress are not roving inspectors for executive-branch facilities.
Waters was smart enough to know that. She and her cohort just fulminated in front of reporters for a while, got their viral clips (such as they were), and went back to Capitol Hill. They weren’t stupid enough to attempt to force entry into the facility and get themselves indicted for felonies. McIver and her cohort, on the other hand, decided to “double down” and start some s*** for teh klix, touching off a riot at the gate and, at least in McIver’s case, getting caught on camera in a very notable red sportcoat battering at least two law-enforcement officers. That went viral in all the wrong ways, providing us a classic case of FAFO.
McIver faces a real chance of prison time under 18 USC 111. Now House Dems want to expand this to an industrial level, risking similar insurrection-y moments with themselves caught between potentially violent activists and law-enforcement officers prepared to deal with it? Does Hakeem Jeffries want to reduce his caucus that badly?
That’s stupid enough. However, the real stupidity is that they are plotting these insurrections on behalf of a fringe position with the American electorate. House Democrats want to go to war against ICE at the very moment that Homeland Security is finally doing what 70%-plus wanted them to do all along. The most recent Harvard-Harris CAPS poll again shows that deportation of criminal illegal aliens is an almost literal 80/20 issue with American voters, and that enforcing border security is almost as popular:
Deporting criminal illegal aliens — such as those detained at the Newark ICE facility that McIver and her colleagues assaulted — had been the most popular policy of the Trump administration for three straight months. It only got eclipsed this month by Donald Trump’s new policy on drug prices, but the levels of support for his immigration and security policies have remained unchanged since Trump’s inauguration.
It’s almost as if House Democrats have decided on mass political suicide. Maybe we should let them do it and enjoy the FAFO that follows … as long as no one gets hurt in the end.
Addendum: Jonathan Turley ripped Democrats over their claims of legitimate “oversight” yesterday as well:
The problem with the oversight claim is that McIver’s status as a member of Congress does not allow her access into closed federal facilities. Congress can subpoena the Executive Branch or secure court orders for access. However, members do not have immunity from criminal laws in unilaterally forcing their way into any federal office or agency.
If that were the case, Rep. Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez would not have posted images of herself crying at the fence of an immigrant facility, she could have climbed over the fence in the name of oversight.
Conversely, Republicans in the Biden Administration could have simply pushed their way into the Justice Department to seek the files on the influence-peddling scandal.
Yet, the point of the claim is less of a real criminal defense and more of a political excuse.
True enough, and one supposes that most people understand that. However, it’s still mystifying why Democrats insist on applying a false excuse for a political stunt that aims at such a small portion of the electorate. Are they really that stupid, or just that obstinately determined to defy public opinion, common sense, and the law? Or are those the same thing in the end?
