Tricia McLaughlin Defends ICE’s Visible Presence

There’s still chaos surrounding what’s going on with ICE.

The anger is palpable in places like Minneapolis. People don’t believe they’re breaking the law even when they’re breaking the law. But if you get in the way of ICE officials who are attempting to pursue a federal operation, you are violating federal law, and you will get yourself into hot water.

 According to The Washington Post:

The fatal shooting of Renee Good last week, as ICE officers and residents faced off on a residential street here, has brought new attention to these activities. … Federal court rulings say citizens can observe and record police activity in public areas as part of their First Amendment rights, and many of the observers are doing nothing more than that. They say that they believe authorities are less likely to use force if someone is recording and that they are providing a public service by letting their communities know when federal immigration officers are nearby.

But as officers and agents employ aggressive tactics, some activists have blown whistles to warn community members of approaching law enforcement, tried to follow immigration enforcement vehicles or used their own cars to block the roadways — entering murkier legal territory. Some legal experts said such behavior could in theory justify obstruction-of-justice charges, but they added that any such prosecution would be unusual.

I interviewed Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for Homeland Security, who noted that the department’s “top priority are these gang members who are murderers, rapists, child pedophiles.”

“I see the reports every single day,” she continued. “And what we’ve seen is just flabbergasting as far as the number of criminals who have been allowed to walk around with impunity in this country. There’s been over a thousand known or suspected terrorists that we’ve arrested in the last year, 3,500 members of Tren de Aragua that we’ve arrested and there’s plenty more who are out there. And that’s why we have been flooding the zone to get these individuals out of our country.”

I asked if ICE needed to be as visible as they are while pursuing these operations.

“I think we should take a step back and talk about what a sanctuary city means when we’re talking about Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago,” she replied. “What exactly does that mean? It means that these sanctuary city politicians are harboring these criminal illegal aliens, but it also means that our law enforcement is not permitted to work with them  … ICE law enforcement is not allowed into the jails.”

“So if Chicago picks up a criminal illegal alien — maybe they picked up somebody who was convicted of rape and that person is in their jail — they’re not allowed to release them to ICE or coordinate their eventual release to ICE for eventual deportation,” she continued. “What happens is that person will serve a certain amount of time, then they’ll be released back onto the street. So the reason that we have such a large law enforcement presence is because we can’t go into those jails to target those criminals, and so we have to really sweep the city, and target them using intelligence, using our case analysis, and make sure that we’re going after these individuals.”

“Immigration enforcement is polarizing, particularly to those on the Left, but the truth of the matter is, this was the mandate that President Trump was given when he was elected into office,” she asserted. “The American people saw that crime was surging. If you look at Minneapolis alone, since Governor Walz became governor, homicides in Minneapolis have increased 50%. But I think when you look at this particular incident, of course, any loss of life is tragic. And we pray for the deceased and her family. But what happened leading up to this, those facts are incredibly important.”

“At 10:25 a.m. Central time on Wednesday, January 7, what happened was this individual had been impeding and blocking in our eyes, law enforcement officers,” she explained. “She had been doing that throughout the day, obstructing lawful operations, which is a felony. At one point, our ICE law enforcement officers approached her vehicle and said to get out of the car, she was going to be under arrest, and they commanded her to stop obstructing operations. That’s when she would not obey those lawful commands. And that’s when we see in the video, the law enforcement officer is in front of her. She hits the gas, and he was in fear of his own life and he was in fear for the law enforcement who were around him. She weaponized her vehicle she used as a deadly weapon on an officer. He responded as his training instructs him to do. And unfortunately, there was a loss of life here. But our officer conducted himself in the way he should have. And he did save his own life.”

I asked her what her reaction was to major Democrats comparing ICE to the Gestapo, suggesting that we are living now under the predations of a police state, and vowing that they were going to try to impede ICE operations themselves.

“They’re clearly legally illiterate, because ICE, CBP, and other DHS law enforcement are conducting these operations with the law behind them,” she answered. “If people don’t like ICE enforcing the rule of law — which is what our men and women are doing every single day — these politicians should change the law. They can lobby Congress to change the law.”

“But continuing to demonize and vilify our law enforcement, you’re going to see more incidents like this because people who are either brainwashed or lunatics are going to take matters into their own hands,” she predicted. “We’ve already seen these vehicles be routinely and perpetually weaponized against our law enforcement. We have a 1,000% increase in assaults against law enforcement. Just last week alone, we had ten of these vehicle rammings. These vehicles are deadly weapons. And one of our law enforcement officers could easily end up killed if we don’t see a stop to this.”

“As far as the political nature of this for the Democrats, Minneapolis has been a flashpoint because of the massive amount of fraud that we’ve seen and that Homeland Security Investigations are investigating,” McLaughlin said. “And so I think that there is a part of this where they’re trying to circle the wagons and really use this as a smokescreen so people stop talking about the fraud.”

Something left unnoticed is that the number of deportations from red states often outnumbers the number of deportations from blue states. The difference is that the blue state governors and sanctuary city mayors are trying to obstruct operations in these blue areas.

In red states, as they cooperate with ICE, these operations tend to go off pretty easily without a hitch. And then the deportations are actually pretty sizable. So it is not as though the Trump administration is only targeting blue areas of blue states. A huge number of deportations are happening in red states and red areas now.

But the rhetoric of the Left ignores that. They are intent on using whatever they can to target the Trump administration, and if it means vilifying the men and women of law enforcement, they are only too happy to do so.