OPINION:
Within the first nine months of 2019, fully 822 federal agents were assaulted at the border by illegal immigrants who were trying to cross.
Or, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and other “abolish ICE,” socialist, open-border types might put it: Poor, suffering migrant families coming to America to find jobs to feed their kids were stopped by 822 racist, cruel and unduly aggressive federal agents at the border in the first nine months of 2019.
Eh. Potatoes potahtoes.
Democrats never do stand on the side of law and order, justice and righteousness, do they?
In their mind, if law enforcement officers suffer physical harm because they’re busily apprehending criminals — well then, it’s their own fault for doing the apprehensions.
In their minds, these 822 don’t really matter. Unbelievable as that sounds — it’s true.
That statistic comes courtesy of Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who lives, breathes and sees the busy criminal crossings at America’s borders every day — and who has little patience for the politically savvy types who see, say, “Illegal,” and immediately think, say, “Votes.”
In a sit-down interview at the National Sheriffs’ Association Conference in Washington, D.C., and in a followup telephone interview from his Arizona office, Dannels also threw out this figure — an eye-opening shocker: “Sixteen thousand violent criminal aliens came into our country in the first nine months [of 2019], too.”
Sixteen thousand.
Dannels knows this because the law enforcement he’s partnered with studied this. And the way the law enforcement officials studied this was by apprehending the criminals. They physically apprehended, and counted, the criminals.
So that figure isn’t just a best guess, Dannels said. It’s actual.
The significance is this: Had law enforcement not done their jobs at the border, 16,000 violent criminal aliens would’ve entered the United States during the first nine months of 2019.
God knows where they’d be right now.
And God only knows why the Democrats believe the way they do.
“Ocasio-Cortez: Abolishing ICE ’Isn’t So Crazy,’ ” MSN.com reported in January of 2019.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat running for president, said in a Facebook post from July 2018: “The president’s [President Donald Trump] deeply immoral actions have made it obvious that we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom, starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our values.”
From Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York, in a June 2018, statement: “ICE is being used to terrorize immigrant communities. … While eliminating ICE would be an important step, it alone is not enough to halt Donald Trump’s deportation machine.”
What of border security? What of the citizens of the United States and protecting those born and raised here, those legally here, those who have no intents to commit crimes here — what of protecting them from the inflow of “violent criminal aliens” across the border?
Good question.
Democrats are mum on that.
Democrats say shhh to that.
And guess what: There are probably at least 16,000 others who want that question to go away quietly, too.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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