Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
There are large anti-[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] demonstrations in Newark, New Jersey, at the Delaney Hall Newark federal detention center. And it’s a very funny demonstration in so many ways.
If you look at the tents of the protesters, the equipment in which they wear, the facilities which they’re accorded, it’s been pretty much pre-orchestrated.
They have very accommodating circumstances that don’t really characterize any other protest I’ve seen. They’ve got state-of-the-art inhalers. They’ve got food supplied to them. They’ve got not just little pup tents, but quite elaborate tents that were set up for them.
The demonstrations are based on lies. It’s all untruth, and we can go through them.
TRENDING ARTICLES
If the state of New Jersey had just followed the law and said that you cannot intrude on federal property, you cannot, what, attack federal officers—some of the officers were bitten, and they were pelted with projectiles.
But Gov. [Mikie] Sherrill decided not to enforce state New Jersey law, and that gave momentum to the protesters.
Second, there was one detainee who died for unknown reasons. He was rushed to the hospital, and all of a sudden, they said these were inhuman conditions. But statistically, it’s about 0.009% or less of detainees dying in federal immigration detainee centers.
So, there’s not some epidemic of, you know, barbarity or something in these centers. They complained about the food. There was a rumor that they were on a mass food strike. That was not true. Not everybody was on a food strike. There were some people who complained, but ICE and the Department of Homeland Security published the menus.
It reminded me of cafeteria food that I’ve eaten my entire life in school and universities. No better, no worse. It was fine. It was probably better than a lot of people were getting before they were detained.
The other thing that was quite disturbing is there’s a class element to it. About 45% of ICE officers are Hispanic.
And yet, when you looked at the crowd of demonstrators, Antifa included, you can see that a lot of these, and I would say the majority, are white. And because these take place often during the day or all day long, there’s an inordinate amount of young people who apparently are not in college or high school, and an inordinate amount of what seems to be retirees.
And here’s the punchline. They were screaming and yelling at the ICE officers, and they were yelling in poorly accented Spanish, a lot of insults to the ICE officers.
Think of that. You have these upscale white leftists who are ridiculing Hispanics who are trying to enforce federal laws, and they’re trying to break federal laws, and they think they have the high moral ground.
The other thing that we should remember is if Donald Trump was not president, there would be no demonstrations. Why do I know that? Because this facility has been in operation as early as 2001 or 2002, but especially under the Obama administration. I think it was from 2011 to 2014. They typically got a lot more detainees in there than Trump did his first year, about 530 or so.
Obama trumped that almost every year. But more importantly, we now have about 905, but at one point, Obama trumped that. He had far more than Trump does now. I don’t remember any demonstrations. None at all.
So, what’s the subtext of all this? Why are people demonstrating? They’re demonstrating because we’re in a midterm election year.
They’re demonstrating because they’ve looked at the polls, and when they characterize ICE as a Gestapo, SS-type of organization, and they magnify the plight of the so-called illegal alien who’s in detention, they feel that that pulls down the polls of Donald Trump.
And a couple of other things to remember. When they say things about illegal immigration, they’re often quite fanciful.
All during this week, people have hit the airwaves and they’ve insisted, one of the Michigan Senate candidates, Abdul El-Sayed, for example, they insist that coming in illegally to the United States is just a civil matter.
That’s completely untrue. It is a criminal misdemeanor to come into the United States unlawfully.
If you do it twice, it’s a felony, and many of these people have done it 10 and 15 times. It’s only a civil matter if you came in legally and you are residing illegally, then you’re cited. And if you refuse to go report and become lawful, then it can be a criminal act.
So, there’s so much misinformation surrounding this, from the pseudo strike of hungry prisoners to the inedible food they’re supposedly subjected to, to the lack of health care that they didn’t get, to people dying inside.
It’s all a lie. But what is not a lie is this is orchestrated by wealthy foundations and individuals on the left. It’s a cooked-up demonstration by people who don’t have an 8-to-5 job.
And there is a class element to it of more or less wealthy people, middle-class, upper-middle-class, wealthy people, demonizing working-class people who are trying to protect communities, especially their own, in the Hispanic community where so much of illegal alien crime is perpetuated, that it’s quite ironic.
It’s a paradox. It’s a joke, and it should end pretty soon. But as long as people buy that narrative and as long as they think they’re getting traction and as long as the mainstream media covers it as some sort of civil rights matter redux, then they’ll continue.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
Read the first chapter of The Woketopus right now for FREE
Today, even with President Trump’s victory, leftist elites have their tentacles in every aspect of our government.
The Daily Signal’s own Tyler O’Neil exposes this leftist cabal in his new book, The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.
In this book, O’Neil reveals how the Left’s NGO apparatus pursues its woke agenda, maneuvering like an octopus by circumventing Congress and entrenching its interests in the federal government.
You can read the first chapter of this new book for FREE in this eBook, The Woketopus: Chapter One using the secure link below.
The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you.
RELATED ARTICLES
Don’t miss the
Don’t miss the signal
