Subject: Re: Minnesota 1, Spankee 0
One of the major political problems that Democrats have failed to solve, and the progressive base especially, is that there is a legitimate and necessary role for the federal government to play in enforcing immigration laws. We're not going to abolish that governmental function, any more than we are every going to abolish the police. And a sizable majority of Americans want there to be law enforcement, including immigration law enforcement. So Democrats generally need to be able to communicate a policy program on immigration enforcement that accommodates that general desire.

Straw man. Democrats were enforcing immigration law, and proposing reforms to enable better enforcement. MAGA lied and obstructed its way to the jack booting policies we see today. Progressives want to see a more humane immigration policy. One that legalizes dreamers, enables family reunification, offers refuge to the oppressed, and enables our economy to continue to benefit from the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants. You should stop lying about democratic immigration policy.

Now, within a system of not-jackbooting immigration enforcement there's a wide variety of positions. You can have a approach to enforcement that prioritizes "the worst of the worst," recognizing that deportation is a very serious consequences that can devastate a person and their family and community in a way that isn't just when imposed on noncriminal violators. Or you can have a super-hardline approach to enforcement that seeks to deport everyone who is in violation of the law, no matter the seriousness of their infraction. Or anywhere in between.

And you can do that in a manner that follows the law and honors due process (or, to the contrary, in a way that doesn't). Again, just like law enforcement. You can have a police department and prosecutor's office that believes it's the best policy to send every single person that's picked up for any crime, even down to a minor drug possession charge or disorderly conduct pinch, to jail/prison for the maximum possible sentence you can get. Or the police and prosecutors can exercise some sense of proportion and attempt at justice, and maybe not send every misdemeanor offender to a maximum sentence. Those two approaches (and all the ones in between) can be done in compliance with the law and due process, but they have dramatically different consequences and costs.

I’ve already established the problems with this stance. You are fully willing to accept the end of constitutional protections and democracy as long as it’s achieved within the law. Fascism is nothing if not meticulously legalistic in its approach to consolidating authoritarian rule. Legalism provides a cover of legitimacy while fascists legally dismantle democracy. This makes you an apologist for fascist methods of achieving hegemonic power. In your view, the law is all that matters, and the consequences of that law are irrelevant.

I asked you before and I’ll ask you again, what advice would have given MLK or Nelson Mandela in 1959?

Homan is definitely an immigration hardliner. Without a doubt, he's going to try to bring the hammer down as hard as he can on immigrants. The difference between him and the Noem/Miller approach is that he appears to recognize that you can accomplish more hardline goals by not jackbooting so much, and paying more attention to who you're bringing in and what you're going to do with them after you detain them in advance.

Homan is an instrument of Trump authoritarianism, and your apology for him makes you complicit in the policy goals of Trumpism. You’re doing you man’s work legitimating Trumpism as legally defendable.

How do you stop the legal dismantling of constitutional protections and democratic governance? I’m not sure how your meticulously legalistic approach to this political moment answers the question, especially when combined with your Clintonian dismissal of progressives within the Democratic Party.