On Friday, the story of an American citizen being held by immigration officials for ten days burst into the political sphere. It was the perfect storm for the press, who were salivating over the opportunity to turn one of the Trump administration’s best polling issues into a liability.
As the original reporting went, Jose Hermosillo was wrongfully arrested in Albuquerque, NM, and held for over a week despite telling ICE officials that he was an American. It wasn’t until his family showed up with a birth certificate and a Social Security card that he was released.
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On its face, this seemed like a pretty big flub by federal officials. After all, no one should want a government that can mistakenly arrest you and hold you for ten days without any evidence that you’re an illegal alien. There’s just one problem, though. Hermosillo not only told immigration officials he crossed the border illegally, but he also signed a statement swearing that as well.
That sound you hear is the sound of a thousand narratives burning to the ground.
This is why it’s always smart to wait for more details before jumping on a story that sounds too good to be true, politically speaking. Democrats and those generally skeptical of Trump’s increased immigration enforcement thought they had the holy grail here. Finally, ICE had rashly and unconstitutionally scooped up a U.S. citizen and violated their rights for over a week. It was the talking point they wanted.
Except it turns out that Hermosillo not only told immigration authorities he wasn’t an American citizen, but he even concocted an entire story about crossing the border illegally to find work in the United States. Why did he do that? I have no idea. Maybe he’s got mental issues. Maybe he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing and thought posing as an illegal immigrant was the better option.
Whatever the reason, given what we’ve learned, it seems patently absurd to continue to blame ICE and the administration for this when this guy left them no choice by lying to them. Were they supposed to ascertain his real history through some sort of telepathy?
Look, I’m highly skeptical of federal power, even when a Republican is president. I think that’s healthy, and we should never convince ourselves that overreach is okay as long as it benefits our side in the short term. There’s enough evidence of how badly that goes when your opposition retakes power to maintain some boundaries. That was not the issue with Hermosillo being detained, though. If I go up to the cops and tell them I murdered someone and then sign a statement to that effect, they are going to detain me until they figure out what’s going on. That’s what happened here, and it is not the fault of ICE or CBP that they were lied to.
And that brings us to the obvious question, given how odd this situation is. Was this a setup?
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