-By Warner Todd Huston
The San Francisco Chronicle and the various demagogue politicians of Berkeley and Oakland, California should really be ashamed of themselves for ginning up into sensational “raids” a few arrests by ICE agents and making of them actions designed to empty those community’s schools of children. In reality a few routine U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in those cities occurred yesterday that had nothing to do with school children. Yet, these politicians shamelessly ran about the countryside waving their arms, serving grave warnings to ICE about their supposed targeting of school children, and ginning up parents with the false bravado of standing athwart ICE’s “harassment and fear.” But, with all the running about like Chicken Little claiming the ICE is falling, no raids either occurred or were even planned. To top it off, the San Francisco Chronicle reports the incident as the “fear across the communities” being “real” instead of correctly noting that these pandering pols in office made much ado about nothing just to inflate their own importance.
Apparently ICE made a few arrests at some homes in Berkeley and Oakland and that somehow sent a “wave of panic among parents” who were fooled into believing that ICE officers were about to raid all the schools in the area to snap up illegals for deportation.
The SFChron reports that “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were in both cities Tuesday, performing routine fugitive operations,” and that “officers arrested four family members at a Berkeley home and a woman at an Oakland residence.” Helpfully, the Chronicle lets us know that “they were not at schools.”
Virginia Kice, a spokesman for ICE, said that these operations happen nearly everyday, they are that common, and that there has never been any plan to raid a school. She informed the Chronicle that, “a school is not a place we would routinely conduct an enforcement operation for a variety of reasons.”
But this reality, this checkable fact of ICE operations, wasn’t going to stop Berkeley and Oakland’s pandering politicians from making political hay out of thin air, no siree.
Continue reading “San Fran Chronicle Spreads False Immigration Raids Story”
Yes, that was the headline for Mark Moford’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle today. Not only does the very title of this screed of ignominious proportions rip into the first lady for no worthy reason, Moford also says that being a Catholic woman is “unfortunate.” Shamefully, he also calls the Bush daughters their “twin Styrofoam peanut daughters,” so it isn’t just Laura Bush he unduly attacks. It’s been a long time since a major newspaper has published a so-called editorial with this much vitriol contained within.