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Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III went to California yesterday to launch a political stunt—disguised as a lawsuit—over the state’s legislation protecting undocumented immigrant residents. While Governor Jerry Brown and State Attorney General Xavier Becerra were both named as defendants in the stunt, it was Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf that America’s most racist Keebler elf lashed out against during his speech to the California Peace Officers Association:
“So here’s my message for Mayor Schaaf: How dare you. How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of our law enforcement officers to promote a radical open borders agenda,” Sessions said.
Schaaf’s “radical open borders agenda”? What she actually did was to call on immigrant residents to learn their rights in anticipation of an imminent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid targeting Northern California. Yes, all people here, regardless of legal status, have basic rights, and leaders should be applauded for educating communities. But what that meant for ICE was less immigrants to arrest, and Sessions wasn’t happy. ICE’s acting director Thomas Homan was fuming. State television host Sean Hannity went ballistic:
“You are putting ICE members at work, border patrol people’s lives in jeopardy, the communities in jeopardy because most of them are known criminals,” Fox News host Sean Hannity said on Tuesday. “There is no excuse for what this woman, this Oakland mayor, is doing by putting people's lives in jeopardy.”
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, but okay Sean. “’They need to lock her up,’ wrote a columnist for conservative commentary site Townhall. ‘If Libby wants to pay lip service to the rule of law while harboring criminal illegal aliens in our country, then let’s make her dreams come true. Lock her up, Sessions!’” Lock her up? Sounds familiar.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “roughly half of the suspected undocumented immigrants rounded up” in the raid had no criminal record at all, and since Donald Trump unleashed his mass deportation force, the arrests of undocumented immigrants who haven’t been convicted of anything have more than doubled. Of course, Trump keeps claiming he’s targeting “bad hombres” for arrest and deportation. In the right-wing attacks against Schaaf, he’s getting help pushing out that lie from state television:
“If you guys think it works out well for you to have these criminal aliens, gang bangers, people transporting weapons, domestic abusers released into the system to get a warning from the mayor in Oakland, flee the scene, come back later when ICE is gone—if you think that's going to work out well for you, God bless you,” his colleague Laura Ingraham also said on-air last week. “I hope it works out.”
If you want to talk abusers, Laura, check the White House. And as to this nonsense about Schaaf deserving to get locked up for obstructing justice, David Leopold, a leading immigration attorney and former president of the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association, has some thoughts:
"What she was doing was nothing more than telling people what their rights are," Leopold said. "She didn't tell people to hide, she didn't tell people to obstruct, she didn't do anything that would violate the law."
"That's why they're taunting her ... they don't have a particular statute that they're pointing to. Because there is none."
“How dare you vilify members of our community by trying to frighten the American public into thinking all undocumented residents are dangerous criminals,” Schaaf said in response to Sessions. “How dare you distort the reality about declining violent crime in a diverse sanctuary city like Oakland, California, to advance your racist agenda. Oakland’s agenda is a thriving community. Trump’s agenda is bigotry and vindictiveness.” Damn right.