UPCOMING EVENT: Next week, Wednesday, February 5 at noon. FFF is hosting a get-together in downtown Boston after the oral arguments in Ian Freeman’s appeal, where we will discuss the oral arguments. I will be there. Trillium Brewing Fort Point, 50 Thomson Pl, Boston, MA 02210; (857) 449-0083; https://trilliumbrewing.com. Reminder: The Court of Appeals is located at One Courthouse Way in Boston. The oral arguments are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on the 7th floor of the courthouse. Trillium Brewing is about one block away. See here for more details.
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To justify his plan to deploy at least 20,000 U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, President Trump has declared a “national emergency,” which is the time-honored way that rulers acquire omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers. Trump’s “national emergency” is based on his repeated claim that illegal immigrants are “invading” the United States. It is a claim that was regularly repeated by Trumpsters during the four years of the Biden administration.
But Trump is wrong. His claim of an “invasion” is just a great big power grab, one that enables him to acquire and exercise dictatorial powers.
An invasion is what the U.S. government did to Iraq. You know — bombs, missiles, bullets, soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, war planes, death, injuries, massive destruction of homes, businesses, and infrastructure, POWs, torture, Abu Ghraib, and thanking the troops for their “service” against a people who had never attacked the United States.
The migrants, on the other hand, cross the U.S. border in an entirely peaceful manner. They do so in an attempt to save or improve their lives through economic activity — that is, by getting jobs and making money. They don’t cross the border with guns, shooting everyone in sight. Instead, they often carry their children, not weapons, in their arms. In fact, it is the Border Patrol and other federal personnel who initiate force against the migrants, who are simply crossing a border peacefully.
There is a distinct danger, however, with Trump’s calling migrants peacefully entering the United States, albeit without official permission, an “invasion.” That danger is that Trumpsters might take it upon themselves to begin killing the “invaders” in a misguided attempt to protect the nation from a foreign “invasion.”
For the past several years, I have regularly received emails from right-wingers who mindlessly repeat Trump’s declaration of a migrant “invasion” of the United States. I take the time to offer them free legal advice, even though I haven’t practiced law in around 40 years. I advise them: Don’t shoot and kill the “invaders” because this isn’t a real invasion, no matter what Trump says. If you shoot and kill an immigrant who has entered the United States without official permission, both federal and state authorities will arrest, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate you. If you try to introduce evidence at your trial that you were simply protecting your country against an illegal “invader,” the judge will not permit you to do so. The federal and state governments will punish you severely for your wrongful taking of a person’s life.
I would like to think that I have saved a few lives with my free advice to Trumpsters — the lives of both immigrants and the would-be shooters, who would end up spending the rest of their lives in prison or even be given the death penalty.
Unfortunately, several years ago a right-winger from Allen, Texas, which is near Dallas, failed to receive such advice or simply decided to disregard it. Convincing himself that America was being “invaded” by the migrants, he traveled to El Paso and unleashed a shooting spree at a local Walmart, doing his best to kill every “invader” he could. Since it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, his shooting spree succeeded in killing both American citizens and Mexican citizens. It might well have been though that he considered all Hispanics to be “invaders” and, therefore, was intent on killing all of them, including American citizens of Hispanic descent. He killed 23 innocent people and injured another 22.
According to Wikipedia, shortly before his shooting spree, the killer, Patrick Wood Crusius, posted a manifesto online in which he bemoaned in part the “Hispanic invasion” of America. Crusius emphasized, however, that Trump was not to blame for his killing spree because Crusius said that he had acquired his “invasion” mindset before Trump became president. The big danger though is that some other misguided Trumpsters might take Trump’s claim of an “invasion” seriously and go out and defend our country by doing what Crusius did.
On July 7, 2023, after pleading guilty to murder and hate-crime charges, Crusius was sentenced in federal district court to 90 consecutive life sentences. The state of Texas is still pursuing the death penalty against him. In other words, Crusius was not hailed as a hero for defending his nation from a foreign “invasion.” He was rightly punished for being nothing more than a murderer.
