Democrats in Connecticut are always looking for opportunities to deplore the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But this week they jumped on what looked like an opportunity before determining what it was really about. They might have been embarrassed if journalists followed up about it.
It began when U.S. Rep. John B. Larson called a rally outside West Hartford Town Hall in support of a local businessman, Seyo Cecunjanin, who had been arrested and taken away by ICE agents nine days earlier as he exited a doughnut shop with his sons. Larson, joined by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, some state legislators, and a few others demanded Cecunjanin’s release, and Larson and one of the arrested man’s sons described the arrest’s circumstances, which included guns and big black cars with covered license plates.
But WTIC-AM1080 talk show host Reese Hopkins also had shown up and unlike everyone else had brought a critical question: Did anyone know exactly why ICE had arrested Cecunjanin?
No one did -- not Larson, not Blumenthal, and none of the rally participants, including former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who is challenging Larson in the Democratic primary for the party’s nomination in the 1st Congressional District, charging that Larson is too old and tired even as the rally was another proof that Larson is furiously running circles around him.
As good Democrats, they didn’t care why Cecunjanin was arrested. They came to the rally on the principle that any arrest by ICE is to be protested and in the confidence that as more illegal immigrants are admitted to the country or exempted from immigration law enforcement, the next census will lead to the creation of more Democratic-leaning congressional districts and fewer Republican-leaning ones. (It doesn’t matter that non-citizens aren’t supposed to vote; the Constitution requires that they be counted in the federal census for apportionment of congressional districts, and illegal immigrants concentrate in the Democratic “sanctuary” cities and states that subvert immigration law, states like Connecticut. With enough illegal immigrants, Democrats will have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives forever.)
But if the rally had been postponed until Cecunjanin’s arrest was clarified, the Democrats might have not been as strident about it. ICE is usually slow to explain itself, but by the end of the day WFSB-TV3 had gotten a response. The agency said Cecunjanin, a native of Montenegro, was arrested because he came to the United States in March 1997 using a fraudulent Dutch passport and six months later an immigration judge had issued a final order of removal for him. Cecunjanin apparently had been violating the order for 29 years until last July, when he left for Serbia, returning two weeks later despite the removal order. In the meantime he racked up a conviction for drunken driving.
“Cecunjanin has made a mockery of our immigration laws on several occasions for more than two decades,” ICE said.
What do Larson, Blumenthal, Bronin, and the other rally participants think about that? What do they think ICE should have done about Cecunjanin’s repeated violation of immigration law? Should ICE have ignored them because the people at the rally say Cecunjanin is a good guy, or because they think all immigration law violations should be ignored until the violators are convicted of mass murder?
There was plenty of journalism about the rally. But it is unlikely to extend to critical follow-up questions. For critical follow-up questions about illegal immigration are politically incorrect in Connecticut.
No one would have needed any explanation from ICE to put a critical follow-up question to Blumenthal at the rally. He remarked that the immigration system is “gridlocked and dysfunctional.” He wasn’t asked why the system is overwhelmed and whose control of the federal government overwhelmed it with millions of illegal entrants and for what purpose.
Another follow-up question might be why the Democrats don’t just attempt candor and admit that their preferred solution to the problem they created is another mass amnesty, along with permanent Democratic control of the House.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
