Having watched their team fall behind in the American League Championship Series two games to none after Monday’s drubbing at the hands of the Seattle Mariners, will fans of the Toronto Blue Jays want to risk crossing the border to catch the next games in Seattle?
The biggest risk could be experiencing more disappointment if the Mariners keep winning, but there is also the possibility of getting entangled with amped up Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Oh, Toronto fans may be fine if they are white enough, but, if their skin is a bit brown and their accent a bit foreign, there is the chance they might end up in a detention center rather than a ballpark.
Is that far-fetched and paranoid? Not really.
In their aggressive quest to meet quotas set by the Trump administration, immigration enforcement agents are going far, far beyond their alleged mandate to round up dangerous criminals who are in the country illegally. Criminals, whether truly dangerous or just petty, are a very small share of the folks being tracked down. Most of those rounded up for possible deportation are workers upon whom farmers, construction companies and other businesses depend. They are mothers hauled from their cars, kids nabbed at schools, nurses, educators, veterans and all types of peaceful, tax-paying residents of our communities. A big share of them have been in the United States for decades.
There are also quite a few American citizens who have been grabbed by ICE and locked up in harsh detention for days, if not weeks, without being granted the essential right of due process that is supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Given all that, is anyone naive enough to believe Trump’s federal thugs would hesitate to hogtie a few Canadian baseball fans if it helped meet their quota?
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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