Over the weekend, an opinion writer published in the New York Times suggested that she might finally have a plan to stop migrant detentions at the United States-Mexcio border: find the names and addresses of the border patrol and immigration officers assigned to staff border detention facilities and harass them at home.
Kate Cronin-Furman, who is, by all accounts, a “professor of human rights” and a scholar of “mass atrocities” according to her Twitter profile (which is now locked), claims that the humanitarian crisis on the border meets the definition of “mass atrocity,” and must be stopped at all costs — and if that includes naming and shaming those who are working in border detention facilities, so be it.
“The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable,” Cronin-Furman wrote. “Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.”
Cronin-Furman claims she’s not advocating any actual doxxing, because that would be wrong. Instead, she wants pro-immigration activists to share the information privately, then set up displays in front of or in close proximity to individual border agents’ homes, so that their neighbors can bear witness to their complicity in “mass atrocities.”
“The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements,” Cronin-Furman claimed.
She also doesn’t want them attacked or hurt, but rather shamed out of doing their jobs.
The plan worked on Nazis, of course. “In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens,” she adds.
As many witnessed over the weekend through video of an “anti-Fascist” rally in Portland that descended into chaos, leaving at least four people, including journalist Andy Ngo, severely injured, the Left isn’t likely to restrict itself to mere publication. Those who might be motivated to make doxxing part of their agenda aren’t often willing to simply stand outside someone’s home with a sign.
But that may even be beside the point, because Cronin-Furman appears to be arguing that any detention of migrants at all is a crime against humanity, and that’s why these officers, who are just doing their job, deserve to be named and shamed. She calls holding immigrants for several days or weeks in anticipation of issuing them a court date a “deliberate, systemic attack on civilians” and hysterically predicts that the Trump administration isn’t so much planning to adjudicate asylum seekers as it is to murdering them en masse.
Democrats in Congress clearly disagree with her assessment. Last week, even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — no friend of the president — rushed through an emergency spending bill designed to flood the border detention facilities with fresh cash in an effort to alleviate the strain on buildings meant to house hundreds, which are now housing thousands.
The bill had few detractors — among them Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — who had even fewer solutions. Afraid to say they simply want to open the borders to all immigrants, they settled on calling the Democrats’ own policy inhumane.