Idaho’s Rep. Simpson gives full-throated support of ICE | Opinion
Most Idahoans have come to respect U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, as a political moderate, often a voice of reason and champion of Idaho’s great outdoors.
That’s why it was disappointing to read Simpson’s full-throated support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a guest op-ed in the Washington Reporter, a partisan outlet newly created by GOP operatives.
“I support law enforcement by removing the worst of the worst from our communities,” Simpson wrote. “I am grateful to know that my family, loved ones, and constituents are safer because our towns are protected.”
We can agree with removing “the worst of the worst” and there is evidence that ICE has met this goal in part, however, ICE’s practice of casting a wide net based on physical characteristics is simply un-American and should be condemned by all – especially by a congressman who voted to fund ICE’s activities.
We should not accept the notion that U.S. citizens or anyone should be deprived of what we have long held are “God given rights,” including due process.
The unlawful rounding up and internment of Japanese Americans is not ancient history. We have learned nothing if we allow ICE to continue unfettered and encouraged by the current mob mentality.
We fail to understand the compulsion to worship at the altar of racism in the name of patriotism.
Further, there is ample evidence that ICE agents are not simply rounding up the most dangerous criminals among us.
“I’m sick of hearing the lies from the media and elected officials about who the Department of Homeland Security is arresting and deporting,” Simpson wrote, tearing a page out of President Trump’s playbook of blaming the media for reporting the truth.
Multiple reliable news reports document children and otherwise law-abiding immigrants being rounded up and deported. In addition, other reliable, verified reports show U.S. citizens being wrongfully detained, and in at least one case, three children who were U.S. citizens — including one with cancer — were deported with their mothers.
In another recent case, a barely dressed Hmong man, a U.S. citizen, was arrested and pulled from his home by ICE agents.
Just this week, ICE agents detained a 5-year-old Minnesota boy with an active asylum case and sent him to Texas, apparently using him as bait.
And a recently leaked memo shows that ICE leadership says ICE agents can forcibly enter homes during immigration operations without judicial warrants, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Where is your outrage about that, Rep. Simpson? Where is your op-ed defending the Constitution?
Perhaps most disappointing is Simpson’s defense of an ICE agent who shot Renee Good in the face, then shot her two more times and killed her as she was trying to drive away from a confrontation with agents.
“Across the country, including in Idaho, left-wing agitators have taken to the streets to defend child sex offenders, drug traffickers, murderers, and other violent criminals, simply because they oppose a president who is actually enforcing the law,” Simpson wrote. “Let me repeat: these individuals are not protesters. They are agitators.”
No, representative, these are good, upstanding citizens protesting against an unlawful Gestapo-like private police force that is increasingly and brazenly acting above the law and the Constitution.
Simpson should be calling for an independent investigation into the shooting of Good. Instead, he defends ICE, giving them license to kill again.
The issue here isn’t immigration enforcement; it’s the way ICE is conducting immigration enforcement.
Mark Bruley, chief of the Brooklyn Park Police Department, which operates in a suburb north of Minneapolis, held a press conference flanked by other local police chiefs, complaining that off-duty officers were being targeted by ICE, asked to show their papers, even having guns drawn on them.
“I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident,” Bruley said. “If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop.”
The situation promises only to get worse.
Because of Simpson and Republicans in Congress who passed the partisan One Big Beautiful Bill, spending on ICE is about to explode.
Funding for ICE has been about $10 billion per year for the past several years, but that amount is about to go up to $85 billion, making ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country, according to NPR.
Pretty soon, it seems, every city in America is going to have an ICE agent going door to door, demanding to see papers and arresting anyone who doesn’t comply — especially people with brown skin.
It’s a shame that Simpson, once a respected voice of reason for Idaho, doesn’t see the writing on the wall.
Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.