As I read an article about what happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, it dawned on me that here in Harris County, we, the taxpayers, are paying for the roundup. We pay for the Sheriff’s deputies, the Constables, and the police departments that are now in the business of rounding up people here whose only crime may have been crossing a border seeking a better life. Should they be here? No, not if they did not come in properly. But too many have been here for decades, settled down, purchased houses, and raised their children, many of whom continue their education or join the military to serve the country in which they were born.
What will the residents of Harris County get in return? Higher unsolved crimes, as witnesses will be afraid to step forward. Fewer crimes will be reported, and John Whitmire’s safer Houston will become a joke as the murder rate not only rises, but the police will find that many people will not step forward to help solve those crimes. If one does step forward, rest assured that the people who committed the crime, if caught, will know who reported them. I reported a crime in progress and was told that they would not know who reported it. Within three days, an attorney for the defendant was knocking at my door. I could live with that, but going to a courthouse where I have to take off my shoes is not my idea of fun, especially given my age and arthritis, which is not easy for me. The person whose house was being burglarized should pay for cameras so he can call the police if he sees people trespassing or breaking into his house.
What caused me to pause and think about what is happening here in Harris County?
DHS flooded the city with who-knows-how-many agents for an entire week, only to net about 250 arrests—roughly 35 a day. The cost of deploying, housing, transporting, and supporting those agents likely ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more!) for what amounts to a statistical blip in a city deliberately working to impede ICE’s operations.
Yet DHS now claims those same agents will be redeployed to Louisiana and Mississippi to arrest 5,000 people in the coming weeks. That’s the difference between operating with full cooperation from state and local authorities and operating in jurisdictions that resist. And it’s why the administration is so deeply frustrated that its mass-deportation fantasies of 3,000 arrests per day keep smashing into reality.
Commissioners
Not a single commissioner has taken a stand or even spoken out about what is happening. Suppose the Democrats like Lina Hidalgo, Leslie Briones, Adrian Garcia, and Rodney Ellis are too afraid of the blowback with voters if they took a stand for the people who are being rounded up. The fact that they are being picked up would maybe not be so bad, but what they are doing to them is. Those Democrats are no different than the people in Nazi Germany who stood by while their fellow Jewish citizens were picked up and sent to camps very similar to what Trump’s SS hoodlums have set up.
If the only thing that I cared about is whether they are doing the basics, then let me tell you the Republicans do as good or a better job than the Democrats. I have lived at my house for nearly 50 years, and I know that I had a better response to issues affecting my community from Republican Steve Radack than from Democrat Leslie Briones.
I don’t care about gay rights, whether one gets an abortion or not, or whether transgender individuals can participate in sports; those issues are not important to me, and I expect that they are not crucial to the vast majority of Americans.
The targeting of brown skinned people by ICE and possibly our police departments does. I went through that in the 1950s, and it should not be happening again, especially with the approval or silence of Democrats who claim they are for the rights of all Americans.
Houston City Council
One Council Member, Letitia L. Plummer, proposed that HPD avoid calling ICE when they encountered someone here illegally. Only one other council member, Council Member Tarsha Jackson, has agreed to sign it; she needs a third council member to sign as well. I am disappointed in my District Council member, Edward Pollard. Is he sticking his finger in the air to see if it’s politically correct, or is he checking with consultants to see what blowback there could be?
I can tell him that the Police and the Union, who primarily support Republicans, now the MAGA party will yell that they are in favor of illegals who commit crimes and are making this city less safe. They constantly scream the same bull, and the media goes along with it. They do it every campaign, and it is bullshit that it is the concern of the majority of the residents and citizens.
I think I have read more about HPD officers being charged with crimes recently than I have about some illegals committing crimes here in Houston.
But come election time, you will have polls claiming that the primary concern is crime, you will have the media, both print and digital, keep yelling the same bull, and when the election is over, crime mostly disappears from the news.
Did you know that former Mayor Sylvester Turner is credited with the reduction in violent crime?
This gradual but definite decrease in violent crime in Houston is often largely attributed to the actions of then Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who started the One Safe Houston initiative in an effort to greatly reduce the violent crime rate in the city.
Keep Houston safe, quit working with the masked hoodlums that terrorize the Hispanic Community, both legal and illegal.
If this keeps up, I will suggest that other than voting for a few candidates, the Hispanics go to the polls but withhold their votes from the majority of Democrats.