Every time ICE conducts an enforcement operation, the protests begin.
Politicians hold press conferences. Activists denounce the agency. Social media fills with accusations that the men and women enforcing our immigration laws are somehow the real threat.
That response has always struck me as backwards.
The real question isn’t whether ICE should be accountable. Every law enforcement agency should be. The real question is this:
Who is standing up for the innocent victims whose lives might have been saved if our immigration laws had been enforced in the first place?
That raises an uncomfortable question.
If these tragedies were potentially preventable through effective immigration enforcement, why do elected officials like Congressman Pat Ryan continue to protest ICE’s enforcement activities rather than stand behind the agency charged with enforcing our nation’s immigration laws?
No law enforcement agency is above scrutiny. If an ICE agent violates the law, that conduct should be investigated, those responsible held accountable, and reforms made where necessary. That should never be in dispute.
But holding individual officers accountable is very different from protesting or vilifying the agency itself.
ICE exists because Congress enacted immigration laws. Its officers do not decide who enters this country illegally. They do not write immigration policy. They enforce the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. Weakening or demonizing immigration enforcement does not make our communities safer. It makes it more difficult to identify, detain, and remove individuals who have no legal right to remain in the United States—including those who later commit violent crimes.
Congressman Ryan is free to advocate for changes in immigration law. That is his right as a legislator. But until those laws are changed, shouldn’t he support their lawful enforcement?
He should explain that to the parents of Sheridan Gorman, whose daughter will never come home.
He should explain it to the family of Kate Steinle, who watched their daughter die after she was shot while walking beside her father on a San Francisco pier by a man who had been deported multiple times.
He should explain it to the parents of Laken Riley, whose daughter left for a morning run and never returned.
He should explain it to the five children of Rachel Morin, who will grow up without their mother.
He should explain it to the family of Jamiel Shaw, the high school football player who never got the chance to become the man he dreamed of being.
He should explain it to the husband and children of Mary Nagle, whose life was taken in an act of unimaginable violence.
He should explain it to the family of four-year-old Esmeralda Nava, who was robbed of an entire lifetime before kindergarten.
He should explain it to the loved ones of Min Soo Chang, an 18-year-old freshman whose future ended because a repeat immigration violator remained in this country.
He should explain it to the family of Danielle Gorectke, a young college student whose life was brutally stolen.
And he should explain it to my family. My 17-year-old niece, Elizabeth Butler, was murdered by a man who was in this country illegally. We don’t view this issue through the lens of politics. We live with it every day.
These aren’t statistics.
They were sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, students, neighbors, and friends.
Their families are entitled to ask a simple question: if enforcing our immigration laws could have prevented even one of these tragedies, why are some elected officials spending their time protesting the people enforcing those laws instead of working to ensure they are enforced fairly, consistently, and effectively?
That is a question Congressman Pat Ryan should answer.
The Valley Viewpoint 