Immigration policy can’t rely on force alone. That was one perhaps obvious but profound insight George W. Bush helped me learn in the 1990s.
He was the governor of Texas and had asked me, then serving as his secretary of state, to be a liaison on border issues with Mexico.
I came to see the Southern divide for what it is: a place where economic and human ties run deep, and security matters.
Equally important, though, is that the rule of law is measured, in part, by how the government upholds it.
Enforcement without discipline can turn the law into an instrument of fear. When preserving the homeland ostensibly requires routine confrontations by masked agents in unmarked vehicles, without body cameras, something has gone wrong — tactically and morally.
That, evidently, is the dynamic today. Recent fatal encounters involving immigration officers in Texas and Maine should trouble every American.
Behind the official phrases — “use of force,” “lawful stop,” “officer-involved shooting” — there is a human being and a government that must answer for what happened in its name.
Officers deserve clear rules. The public deserves standards worthy of a constitutional republic. What the nation has gotten instead — the result of Congress’s refusal to pass comprehensive reform — is a system that is neither secure nor humane.
Allow me, then, to outline the ideal.
The United States needs secure borders. We need to know who is entering the country, and we need to keep out those who would do us harm.
No serious person can dismiss that obligation in a post-9/11 world. We also need a functioning visa tracing system that effectively identifies overstayers.
Yet we also need a steady supply of lawful immigration. Farms, restaurants, hotels, construction sites and caregiving institutions depend on reliable foreign labor.
What we don’t need: dangerous immigration enforcement tactics.
President Donald Trump no doubt agrees in principle but errs in practice. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suspended the use of traffic stops by federal immigration officials. Apparently caught off guard by the decision, the president reversed course. “We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools,” he wrote on Truth Social.
But, respectfully, such stops aren’t smart.
Even if they may be technically lawful in some circumstances, they are wrong as a routine method of enforcement.
