(Daily Signal)—In their attempts to thwart federal enforcement of our immigration laws, politicians like Democrat state Rep. James Hawkins of Massachusetts apparently want to make it even easier for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (and their families) to be doxed, harassed, and attacked.
It’s hard to come to any other conclusion when, in the face of the open defiance and violence against these agents, Hawkins drops a bill in the Massachusetts Legislature that would force those federal agents to unmask so they can be identified by hostile mobs.
House Docket No. 4886 would apply to all “local, state, or federal law enforcement” agencies (except for SWAT officers) and make it a crime for them to “wear any mask or personal disguise while interacting with the pubic in the performance of their duties.”
Hawkins has tried to justify his interference with, and endangerment of, federal agents by claiming that “police officers never wear masks and they are dealing with much more dangerous situations. They’re dealing with gunfire, with violent people, and they don’t wear masks.” Really?! Has Hawkins not been watching and reading the news lately?
Attacks on ICE agents are up 700% over last year. While the rest of us were celebrating Independence Day, an armed group ambushed ICE agents and local police at a detention center in Alvarado, Texas, wounded an officer, and sprayed anti-ICE graffiti. On the same day, violent protesters in Portland, Oregon, hurled incendiary devices at ICE officers and tried to burn down a government building. Only three days later, a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, was shot at, and two agents and a staffer were injured.
Two days later, ICE agents in California were physically attacked and blocked from enforcing federal immigration laws. There has been massive mob violence in Los Angeles, so severe that federal troops had to be called in to restore order and protect federal agents and facilities.
Democrat politicians and organizations are supporting and encouraging this defiance and violence.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has praised these agitators as “profoundly courageous,” while her “squad” cohort Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota calls ICE agents “deranged.” Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara has celebrated the occupation of ICE buildings while Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts has vilified ICE and lauded illegal obstruction of federal law enforcement.
They sound a lot like Southern Democrats of another era, who declared that state officials and state governments had a right to nullify federal laws and resist their enforcement.
In addition to his obliviousness to this violence, Hawkins (a former teacher, no less), along with the 16 other constitutionally ignorant state legislators who signed on to sponsor his bill, are apparently unaware of the supremacy clause in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.
The supremacy clause provides that the “laws of the United States” are “the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” In other words, neither Hawkins nor the state of Massachusetts can impose state requirements on federal law enforcement agents, nor prosecute them for supposedly committing a state crime when acting within the scope of their federal duties.
Hawkins might want to read the well-known 1890 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, In re Neagle, which has facts like something out of a Hollywood movie. In that case, California tried to prosecute a U.S. marshal for murder when he shot and killed a state Supreme Court justice who, upset over a judgment against his wife, was attempting to kill a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who was in California riding the circuit.
The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the prosecution, ordered the marshal’s release from jail, and held that a state cannot prosecute an official or agent of the federal government for discharging his duties as an officer of the United States. This also means that neither Hawkins nor any state government can impose requirements or restrictions on federal law enforcement officials, such as ICE agents, on how and when they carry out their duties. Period.
If Hawkins and his fellow Democrats go to the Boston Common, they will find the bronze sculpture of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The 54th was the gallant, all-Black Union regiment that fought in the Civil War to end slavery and the defiance of Southern state governments to the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Perhaps that sculpture will remind them that we settled the question of whether state officials like Hawkins can defy federal law in 1864. Back then, the state of Massachusetts was on the right side of this issue. Hawkins’ political party was not.
Originally published by The Washington Times
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