Columns

The three amigos of immigration enforcement — President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan — are shamelessly vilifying Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

That’s odd. These bullies usually only terrorize lowly Mexican immigrants. The power dynamic shifts when they pick on a U.S. citizen and elected official with a soapbox.

The amigos are no match for Schaaf. Their accusations are false. Their arguments are full of holes. And now their lies have been exposed.

Besides, Schaaf knows how to fight back. When the amigos attacked her, she said out loud what many Americans have already figured out: Trump’s immigration crackdown — in California and across the country — is driven not by a desire for border security or safe streets but by anti-Latino racism.

Same old story. If this were the late 1700s, and the purge were being led by Benjamin Franklin, the target would be German immigrants — including perhaps some named “Trump.” Now, it’s the Mexicans’ turn to be picked on.

Schaaf knows the script, which is why the administration needs to keep her quiet by trying to push her around. The Justice Department claims to be investigating her, and the amigos accuse her of aiding and abetting illegal immigrants to elude federal agents in the lead up to a recent raid in Oakland.

All Schaaf did was alert the public, on Feb. 24, of an impending four-day operation by the federal government in her city — dubbed “Operation Keep Safe” — that she feared would cause chaos for residents. She posted the warning on Twitter.

Heavens, I do hope she can avoid the electric chair.

Conservatives — whose passion about immigration often far exceeds their knowledge of the topic — compare Schaaf to someone who drove the getaway car for a bank robbery. The digital media site HotAir.com said she “gang-signals illegals.”

Por favor. First, Schaaf swore an oath, but it wasn’t to Washington; she doesn’t take orders from the federal government any more than immigration agents take orders from local municipalities that make meaningless declarations of sanctuary. Second, it’s absurd that ICE — which routinely alerts employers of impending raids, which leads to employers informing workers, which leads to workers mysteriously not showing up for work that day — is now suddenly concerned about secrecy. And third, if Californians want to punish the accomplices for illegal immigration, all they have to do is round up the U.S. citizens who employ them — to pick peaches, build homes, raise kids, clean houses, and do every other chore that entitled Americans think is beneath them.

Recently, the administration’s case against Schaaf fell apart. Both Sessions and Homan have said that 864 “criminal aliens” skedaddled because Schaaf tipped them off. They arrived at that figure by taking the number of targeted immigrants — which media reports put at “nearly 1,100” — and subtracting the number they actually arrested, which officials claimed was 232.

But there is no proof that those 864 “criminal aliens” had access to Twitter, saw that tweet, or even that they read English well enough to understand it if they had seen it.

It gets worse. The whole “nearly 1,100” number is phony. That was just the target, which ICE never hits. Former ICE Director John Torres has said the agency typically captures about 40 percent of people it targets in sweeps.

And worse. James Schwab, a former ICE spokesman for Northern California, resigned on March 9 to protest what he called “false and misleading” public statements by Homan, Sessions and Trump about Schaaf and the operation. A dozen U.S. senators have signed a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, asking him to investigate Schwab’s claims.

And worse. The administration is now saying that three of the people Schaaf supposedly helped escape were later arrested on other crimes. Yet, an ICE spokesman confirmed that the arrests took place far from Oakland — in Sacramento (80 miles away), Los Banos (110 miles away), and Tulare County (220 miles away). There is also no evidence that the three men have ever been to Oakland.

What a circus. This is what happens when a news story is polluted by politics and personal agendas. The first thing you lose sight of is the truth.

During Holy Week, Schaaf’s bravery in the face of slander and spin recalls a certain Bible tale about a boy who took on a giant with no more than a sling. And we know how that story turned out.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation,” is available through every podcast app.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post Writers Group

SAN DIEGO — Picking fruit and vegetables is a crummy job that Americans aren’t exactly eager to do. Not at any wage.

Yet recently, in a tragedy set against the backdrop of the lush farmland of Central California, a husband and wife were on their way to do a couple of those crummy jobs — when instead they wound up at the morgue.

The farm workers were 35-year-old Santo Hilario Garcia and 33-year-old Marcelina Garcia Profecto. One fateful day last week, Garcia came out of his house before 7 a.m. and got behind the wheel of an SUV, with Profecto beside him. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents spotted Garcia and concluded that he fit the description of a suspect they were after. So they trailed him and pulled him over. As the agents exited their vehicle, Garcia panicked and sped away. The SUV slid off the road, flipped over and crashed into a power pole. The couple died at the scene.

Two other details:

First, at home, the couple left behind six children who are now orphans. A half dozen kids will grow up without parents, maybe wind up in foster care.

And second, this dreadful story could have been avoided if the ICE agents were better at their jobs. You see, they made a mistake. They weren’t after Garcia, only someone who looked like him.

That’s understandable. In these dark days of fear and loathing, all Latino immigrants look alike.

You hear anti-immigrant pundits on television talking about how farmers want “open borders” so they can keep wages low and exploit immigrants while denying jobs to Americans. It’s one of those colossally ignorant statements that comes from city folks who think that milk comes from the supermarket.

With unemployment in California at a mere 4 percent, most of the folks who want to work are working. Meanwhile, those who don’t want to work have the whole day free to call into talk radio shows and complain about how there are no jobs.

A fast-food restaurant near my house needs workers and it is offering $11 per hour, the state’s minimum wage.

In San Diego County, an avocado farmer insists he can do better and that his workers can earn as much as $15 per hour. In Fresno County, a citrus farmer tells me that he is paying workers $22 per hour to pick mandarin oranges.

These gentlemen and other growers make up California’s agriculture industry, which brings in $45 billion annually. Neither has ever had an American come up to them and ask for a job picking fruit.

California — which has the world’s sixth largest economy — couldn’t survive without farming. And farming would vanish without illegal immigrant labor.

Hatred and heated rhetoric doesn’t bring in the harvest.

I didn’t read this story in a book. I saw it with my eyes. I was born and raised in Central California. That is my home. The people there — who are often looked down on by clueless sophisticates in San Francisco and Los Angeles — are my people.

And, where immigration is concerned, my people live in the real world. Unlike the folks in Rust Belt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania who want to curl up in the fetal position and wait out the global economy by relying on Trump administration tariffs on steel and aluminum, the people in Central California are too busy working to stop and listen to those who say there is no work.

In fact, the state’s farmers are so productive, and their industry so efficient, that they grow more than half of the produce in the United States and still have a surplus to sell overseas. So if countries like Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Brazil — which make up more than half of steel imports into the United States — retaliate against Trump’s tariffs, agricultural exports could wind up taking the brunt of the punishment.

Back to the tragedy, I know what you’re thinking. But don’t speak to me about blame. Parents are not perfect. Like ICE agents, they make mistakes. These parents made the mistake of living in the country illegally. Then they made the additional — and fatal — mistake of fleeing from law enforcement officers. And for those mistakes, they paid a very high price.

Still, when confronted by heartbreaking stories like these, Americans can’t get so focused on legality that we lose sight of our humanity. That is, if we want to continue to claim to be a civilized people.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation,” is available through every podcast app.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post Writers Group

SAN DIEGO — President Trump only spent about three hours in America’s Finest City last week.

It was barely enough time to get a cup of coffee. Or — since San Diego was founded by the Spanish in 1769, and today hums along due in large part to the productivity of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans — maybe a café con leche.

From the tone of his remarks, Trump could’ve been in town to promote a new book titled “Border Security for Dummies — 12th-Century Solutions for 21st-Century Problems.”

That’s because, however brief, the visit gave Trump a chance to inspect prototypes for his “big beautiful wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border, which could cost as much as $25 billion.

You remember, the wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for. Our neighbor essentially told Trump: “No way, Jose.” Just as well, because — even if Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had cut a check — there was no time for Trump to dash across the border and pick it up. We really need to look into direct deposit.

There are some things in life that look better close-up than they do from far away. The border wall is the opposite. The farther you live from the border, and thus the less you know about Mexico and immigration, the better the idea sounds.

I bet there are bumper stickers on cars in Cleveland or Pittsburgh or Milwaukee that read: “Build the Wall.” Well, in this border city, folks know that any solution to a vexing policy issue that fits on a bumper sticker is probably not the best idea since Google.

Besides, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Trump Wall will probably never materialize. And even if it does, it will be neither big nor beautiful. Trump will be lucky to break ground on a few hundred miles along a border that spans 1,954 miles. And, since it is likely to rely at some points on fencing and sensors, it certainly won’t be a solid structure made of steel and aluminum.

Have you seen the price of steel and aluminum these days? It might be cheaper for Trump to use silver.

And speaking of silver, plenty of it is about to rain down on the arch-enemies of the U.S. Border Patrol — the ruthless, multimillion dollar human-smuggling cartels that welcome any talk of building walls because it lets them double their prices.

Depending on where and when you cross, a one-way trip across the U.S. border can now cost as much as $4,000. If Trump ever builds his wall — or even a generic version of it — the price will jump to $8,000.

Trump always brags about how smart he is because he went to an Ivy League college.

Here’s what I picked up when I took a break from attending an Ivy League college to enroll for a year as a visiting student at a state college back home in Central California: Employing a strategy that strengthens your adversary is, well, not smart.

As someone who has covered the immigration debate for more than 25 years, I feel like I’ve been writing about the concept of a border wall since California belonged to Mexico.

Don’t let the fact that I’m Mexican-American fool you. I want to give the Border Patrol what they’ve been demanding from politicians for years with no luck: tunnel-detection equipment, roads along the border, the most sophisticated technology. You see, I’m in favor of border security. I’m just not in favor of dumb ideas that backfire and do more harm than good.

While in San Diego, Trump told a crowd of supporters that California wants the wall, and San Diego wants the wall.

Actually, according to polls, both statements are fake news. The only people who want a wall are California’s newest and whiniest minority: Republicans.

But since California is a deep-blue state where Democrats in the state legislature can pass whatever pieces of ridiculous legislation they like — and believe me, they come up with plenty — without a single Republican vote, who cares what the GOP thinks? In this state of nearly 40 million people, it sometimes feels as if you could stick all the Republicans into a publicly financed football stadium.

How did my home state get this broken? Like this: Back in the 1990s Republicans in California took leave of their senses over immigration and alienated the gigantic Latino population by proposing dumb, overly punitive ideas that backfired and did more harm than good.

Thank goodness that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation,” is available through every podcast app.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post Writers Group

Around this time of year, I remember to pour myself a wee bit of whiskey, listen to “Danny Boy” and pay my respects to one of my favorite tribes of rowdies and rogues.

They were the O.B.H. The Original Bad Hombres. Catholic immigrants, they came to these shores as throwaways from their homeland — the kind of place that today someone might call a “s——- country” — where corrupt politicos had betrayed and cheated them. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a cigar box of family photographs, a fierce work ethic and the character that comes from suffering. They were denied jobs because of their religion or ethnicity. And when they could find work, they did the sorts of dangerous and dirty jobs that Americans thought were beneath them — only to be accused of taking jobs from natives. For their trouble, they were tormented by know-nothings and subjected to decades of insults, discrimination and mistreatment.

They got an up-close look at America’s schizophrenia. Those who despised them wouldn’t let them live nearby, but then those same people accused them of segregating themselves. They were told they’d never blend in, then accused of dividing their loyalty between this country and the one they left behind. They loved this land even when it didn’t love them back. There was no mistaking them for the blue bloods who looked down upon them. Their blood is green.

I speak of course about Irish-Americans. Saints alive. Whom did you think I was talking about? I suppose their story does sound familiar.

Someone once asked me: “If you weren’t Mexican, what would you be?” Without hesitation, I said: “I’d be ashamed.”

But the five years I spent in Boston gave me the chance to fall in love with another community that knows all about loss and pain and heartbreak.

These days, I think: If I couldn’t be Mexican, I’d be Irish. It’s a short walk. We’re both Catholic, and we’re not far removed from our immigrant roots. After all, what is an empanada but a more compact version of shepherd’s pie? And we both play sad songs so we can cry and feel happy.

My Irish friends pay tribute — in a classic hymn that dates to 1913 — to a young man who heard “the pipes are calling” and had to leave Ireland, either to fight in World War I or to seek his fortune in America. Danny Boy is destined to come home “when summer’s in the meadow,” or “when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,” and “all the flowers are dying,” only to find that his loved ones have passed away — and he never got the chance to say goodbye. Such is the sadness of Ireland.

As part of their own diaspora, Mexicans know this story — of leaving, returning, leaving again — by heart. Our anthem, which I heard at countless Mexican weddings growing up in central California, was popularized by the iconic Mexican crooner Vicente Fernandez. The classic song speaks of love and loss, the kind that tortures you and drives you mad. Having learned to love and lose, and accepting that you were wrong, you can only hope to make it back to the arms of your beloved. Your last wish is to “Volver, Volver” (go back) to where you started, and make better choices.

Mexico’s pain is evident in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s haunting ballad, “Sinaloa Cowboys”: “For everything the north gives, it exacts a price in return.” It’s in the tears of the Mexican immigrant named Jose whom I interviewed last year on an avocado farm in San Diego County. He is proud to tell me that he has two teenage daughters in private school in Mexico, where they’re learning English so they can have a better life. Jose hasn’t seen his girls in 10 years, and he can’t talk about them without his eyes filling with tears. Such is the sadness of Mexico.

To many Americans, Mexicans are all about the “D’s.” They’re dirty, dangerous, devious, dumb, defective and damaging to civilized society. A screed like that is offensive, but it’s not original.

A hundred and fifty years ago, people said the same — and worse — about our distant cousins from the Emerald Isle. They were wrong then. Just as they’re wrong now. When Ireland sent its folks to America, it did send its best.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, lads.

Washington Post Writers Group

Ruben Navarrette is a Washington Post columnist.

SAN DIEGO — Is anyone else embarrassed by the great American gun debate? It’s not so great. In fact, much of it is absurd.

It’s been two weeks since the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead, and we’ve learned that much of what went wrong in that case had nothing to do with guns.

It had to do with armed Broward County sheriff’s deputies crouching behind their squad cars outside the school while teachers and students were being slaughtered inside, and the FBI fumbling its dealings with 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz. It had to with all those people who ignored red flags that this young man was dangerous, and the fact that law enforcement had been called to Cruz’s house at least 45 times. And it had to do with extreme negligence on the part of James and Kimberly Snead, the couple who took in Cruz and let the young man bring high-powered weapons into their home.

Of course, none of this lets firearms — and those who make, sell and buy them — off the hook. And it is when the talk turns to guns that the absurdity really kicks into overdrive.

Like when Wayne LaPierre tells attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that the problem with our society is that everyone plays the victim — moments before the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association makes victims out of gun owners.

Or when an arena full of left-wing anti-gun activists at a CNN town hall betray the liberal traditions of preaching tolerance and defending women by intolerantly attacking and slandering NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch.

Or how conservatives — many of whom oppose legalizing drugs because they say doing so would only encourage more drug use — now say that the way to curb gun violence in schools is to put more guns in schools and arm teachers.

Americans need a serious gun debate. We’re not there yet. We’re spiraling. We’re shouting at one another. We’re barricaded in our ideological bunkers. We’re tuning each other out. We’re dismissing even modest proposals because of paranoia. And we’re ascribing sinister motives to those whose views we don’t agree with.

Meanwhile, amid the fog, important questions go unanswered. Should high-powered, military-style semiautomatic rifles be sold to the public? If so, who should be allowed to own them — and at what age? How many such guns should someone be able to purchase? How do we strengthen background checks, and should we perhaps add a psychological test? And how do we make our schools safer — while still preserving the Second Amendment?

Let’s at least be clear what the gun debate is really about. Here’s a hint: It’s not hunting.

A few days after the Parkland shooting, radio host Rush Limbaugh took a revealing call from a gun enthusiast who said the real reason that he and his kind want to own high-powered, high-capacity, semiautomatic rifles is because they want to have as much firepower as the U.S. government — just in case things go sideways and our leaders turn tyrannical.

I’ve heard others say the same thing. And it makes me recall Donald Trump’s notorious sound bite in June 2015 about Mexican immigrants. To paraphrase:

When the NRA defends gun owners, they’re not always defending the best people. … They’re defending people that can have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them — to our schools. They’re bringing death. They’re bringing chaos. They’re fanatics. And some, I assume, are good people.

Welcome to the new arms race, one that private citizens are never going to win until people can buy battleships on Amazon.

Here’s what the Second Amendment says:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

And here’s what many gun enthusiasts hear:

“Just in case it becomes necessary to overthrow the State, the right of the people to stockpile weapons of war and engage in an arms race with Uncle Sam shall not be infringed.”

See what happened there? Over the years, the gun lobby has brazenly repurposed the Second Amendment 180 degrees into something completely different than what it was originally intended to be. The Founders wanted everyday Americans to be able to own guns in order to protect the state, not overthrow it.

The latter is not freedom. It’s anarchy. And, if you can’t tell the difference, you most certainly should not have a gun.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.His daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation,” is available through every podcast app.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post Writers Group

SAN DIEGO — In light of indictments handed down against 13 Russian nationals by special counsel Robert Mueller for attempting to interfere in the 2016 election, both liberals and conservatives have gravitated to the narrative that the Russians succeeded in dividing Americans, fostering tribalism and creating discord in our politics. I get why that chorus has become so loud. This line of argument is convenient for the political parties.

Republicans want to deflect attention away from Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign and avoid questions about why — in Trumpland — so many roads lead to Moscow. They think the way to do that is to blame the Obama administration for not doing a better job of stopping Russian interference.

Democrats want to continue to hammer away at their claim that the Russians cost them the election by, for instance, using social media ads to convince voters not to support their party’s nominee. After all, this is cheaper and easier than leaving Washington and traveling to the Rust Belt with an economic plan that lures back working-class voters.

Even so, I don’t buy the idea that the Russians divided America. And neither should you. This line of thinking gives too much power to foreign actors. Worse, it doesn’t assign enough responsibility to the people who really created chaos, generated animosity and polarized the electorate in the last election.

The evidence is depressingly clear that it was Americans who divided America. And much of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of two Americans in particular: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

? It’s not just that these two individuals were the most deeply flawed presidential candidates offered up by the major parties in modern U.S. history. And it’s more than the fact that they spent months engaged in a race to the bottom and ultimately represented a disheartening “lose-lose” choice for voters.

It’s also that the types of slash-and-burn campaigns they chose to run — during both the primary and general elections — tore apart the nation and brought out the worst in Americans.

In the Democratic primary, Clinton tore into rival Bernie Sanders, telling CNN in January 2016 that the Vermont senator was offering unrealistic “big ideas” that were light on specifics, overplaying his anti-establishment credentials, focusing too much on income inequality, and being soft on gun control. She also seemed to paint Sanders’ supporters as suckers who were so delighted by proposals like single-payer health care and free public college tuition that they didn’t seem to care that Sanders never explained how he would pay for the giveaways. Later, in a book she wrote after losing the election, Clinton blamed Sanders — and his attacks on her character — for the fact that polls showed a majority of Americans thought she was untrustworthy.

And, of course, during the general election, the Democratic nominee famously disparaged Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”

For his part, during the GOP primary, Trump attacked, well, anyone and everyone. He viciously clawed at just about every other Republican on the ballot, various members of the party’s establishment, and anyone else who got in his way or had anything negative to say about him. In debates, he lobbed personal insults at opponents like Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz.

Trump started his campaign by impugning the character of Mexican immigrants, describing them as criminals, rapists and drug traffickers. In time, he would also crudely attack women — particularly female journalists or politicians who dared to challenge him. From there, he moved on to attacking Muslim Americans, Hollywood actors, union bosses, corporate CEOs, former presidents, members of Congress, foreign heads of state and a certain “Mexican” judge who was born in Indiana. In fact, the only people whom Trump didn’t criticize were Third World strongman dictators, white supremacists and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Everyone else was fair game.

And, for each of these candidates, those antics were just the warmup acts. They really let the fur fly when they attacked each other — with Clinton basically calling Trump a misogynist, and Trump responding that Clinton was a “nasty woman.”

What a mess these two made of the American political landscape. Hopelessly in love with themselves, but without the slightest bit of shame, they left the country in shambles.

But do tell me again how it was the Russians who divided America. I just love a good fairy tale.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation,” is available through every podcast app.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post Writers Group