Charles P. Pierce: Trump's Immigration Chief Just Floated Throwing (Democratic) Politicians in Jai

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14538420/trump-ice-jail-politicians-sanctuary-cities/

Trump's Immigration Chief Just Floated Throwing (Democratic) Politicians in Jail
Look out, Jerry Brown.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 3, 2018


Our continuing series on All The Best People whom the president* promised he’d hire once the country lost its mind and elected him now focuses on this Thomas Homan guy, the acting director of the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement section of the Department of Homeland Security, which was a bad idea at the time and looks even worse in retrospect. ICE, ICE, baby, has been the brutal face of the administration’s* base-arousing, if incoherently savage, crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

Homan has found within himself an authoritarian knob that turns way past 11. He wants to throw California Governor Jerry Brown in jail, along with any other elected state official who adopts a “sanctuary” policy in the area over which they have jurisdiction. New York caught Homan chatting this plan over with Neil Cavuto of the Fox Business Channel.

In an interview Tuesday with Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto, Homan said political leaders in sanctuary cities, which don’t cooperate with ICE officials looking to make immigration arrests, are breaking the law when they “knowingly shield and harbor an illegal alien.” “That is a violation of 8 USC 1324. That’s an alien-smuggling statute. I’ve asked the Department of Justice to look at this,” he said. “Can we hold them accountable? Are they violating federal law?” When Cavuto pressed Homan on what he’d do if the Justice Department decides that federal law is being violated, he suggested that politicians be held “personally accountable.” “We’ve got to take these sanctuary cities on. We’ve got to take them to court and we’ve got to start charging some of these politicians with crimes.”

Well, that certainly will be some fun.

(To be entirely fair to him, Homan has thrown cold water on one of the president*’s most cherished beliefs—that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than other classes of Americans.)

ICE is out there doing things that, one day, are going to embarrass the conscience as much as the revelations about torture did. Of course, we all got over that.