OPINION:
A Cinco de Mayo celebration called El Carnaval de Puebla, held each year in Philadelphia, has just been suddenly canceled — and in short order, it’s due to President Donald Trump.
Why? The normal and usual Mexican holiday participants are worried they might get deported.
This is a good thing.
For years, under Barack Obama, the law-abiding of the nation have watched with a wintry mix of outrage and disbelief as the nation’s illegals stood at podiums — public podiums, immigration officials be hanged — to shed tears for their entitlement rights, and demand the mean ol’ Republicans who want to deport them get in the amnesty line. Jose Antonio Vargas was probably the worse-case scenario of a face-slapping to America’s border control laws.
Remember Vargas?
He was the guy who penned a long-winded heart-puller in New York Times Magazine entitled, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.” Was he arrested? No. Shortly after writing another piece about the plight of the illegals — to include his personal struggles in a country like America with borders — Team Obama announced the halting of deportation of those age 30 and under who met certain DREAM Act circumstances.
Vargas was also the guy who called his illegal self an American — that he just didn’t “have the right papers.”
Right.
But he was hardly the only illegal in America, under the Obama administration, to boldly go forth as an illegal — to demand equal rights to citizens. Thousands of others took part in public events, outright outing their illegal statuses, outright casting deportation concerns to the wind. And why wouldn’t they? Obama had an open door policy at the border — an open door policy that led him, in the days before the last presidential election, to pretty much encourage those without voting rights to, well, get to the ballot boxes and vote, anyway.
His message: Because who’s going to deport them?
When asked in late 2016 by a member of the media if undocumented citizens and dreamers — “I call them citizens” — got in the election game and voted, would immigration officials then know their location and deport them, Obama’s response: “Not true. And the reason is first of all when you vote you are a citizen yourself. And there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating.”
Go on, Obama egged. Vote. Nobody’s checking — not in my administration, anyway.
Well, new administration. And now illegals across the nation seem to be getting the message that the new sheriff in the White House isn’t so blind to the borders.
Typically, up to 15,000 gather in South Philadelphia each year for the Cinco de Mayo celebration. But this year?
Different story, it seems. In recent times, Trump’s border control officials have arrested or detained hundreds of illegals. Why just within the last few days, 248 were detained in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia during a mass federal raid that lasted about two weeks.
As such, illegals everywhere are starting to think: Hey, maybe we ought not strut about as if we’re citizens any longer.
Good idea.
“The group of six organizers decided to cancel unanimously,” said Edgar Ramirez, one of the Cinco de Mayo organizers, to a local NBC affiliate about the fate of the event. “Everyone is offended by the actions of ICE. They did not feel comfortable holding the event.”
Ramirez’s comments were meant to be critical — were meant to demonstrate just how Trump’s crackdowns were causing undue chaos in the illegal community. But sorry, no sympathy here. For the law-abiding in America, Ramirez’s announcement is just yet another feel-good moment for the election of Trump — another chance to breathe a collective sigh of relief that the adults are back in charge and order, justice and law once again count.
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