The last couple of weeks of every calendar year really aren't set up for paying close attention to the heavy stuff, are they? Living in the moment is difficult, what with all of the reminiscing about the year that has just passed and planning for the year ahead. I was pondering writing some "Best Of" or "Worst Of" columns to wrap things up when it occurred to me that I have never done a "Person of the Year" announcement. I know that patriotic Americans spend a lot of time wondering what I think about things, so I decided it was time to start doing one.
For America.
I have decided to mimic Time Magazine and use "Person of the Year" even if it's a whole bunch of people. Worry not, I won't be mimicking anything else from Time.
It is with great pleasure and honor that I announce that the agents of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are/is the first annual Stephen Kruiser Person of the Year.
Yeah, that collective thing does introduce a note of confusion, but I'm sticking with it.
My entire life has been spent living in two states that share a border with Mexico — my native Arizona and California. I am back in my hometown of Tucson, which means that I am a mere 60 miles away from our neighbors to the south. This is all to provide context for my contention that border issues have always been a bit more important to me than they would be to, say, a farmer in Iowa. Or a northeastern liberal who thinks anyone lacking a Mayflower pedigree is "ethnic."
From the moment that then-private citizen Donald Trump descended the Golden Escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, his primary message was about securing the Mexican border. It was easy to tell that he was hitting all the right notes because the Democrats immediately began screaming "RACISM!" in response to his announcement speech.
Trump did something that rarely happened with any Republican back then — he frankly admitted that there were a lot of really bad, dangerous people coming across the border. Prior to Trump, GOP politicians had been bullied into using the language of the Democrats, leading off every conversation on immigration policy with stories about the good, plucky people who were only coming here illegally because they wanted to provide better lives for there families back home. There was never any discussion of cartels, human trafficking, or even the fact that a lot of those good and plucky people die from being left in the desert by the coyotes who are also doing the trafficking.
Those are the people we worry about here in Southern Arizona.
It takes focused, determined force to combat the worst of the people who come here illegally, and that's where ICE comes in.
Democrats are up in arms because, in order to get to the people who might behead you, ICE also has to arrest the guy who's prepping your enchilada, taco, beans, and rice #7 combo plate at the Mexican restaurant in Tucson. By the way, the Dems have also convinced themselves that combo plate guy isn't breaking the law, simply because they've stopped saying "illegal alien."
Here's a reality check on what ICE does from something Catherine wrote the other day:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release on Dec. 27 detailing some of the illegal aliens arrested on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. “While families across the country joined together for Christmas celebrations, ICE continued delivering the American people the greatest gift of all: getting criminals out of our neighborhoods and protecting our families,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin proudly.
She added, “On Christmas Eve and Christmas, our ICE officers arrested gang members, murderers, drug traffickers, and violent thugs. We are thankful for our law enforcement who sacrifice time with their family and put their lives on the line to remove the worst of the worst.” This is particularly impressive because attacks on ICE officers are up by more than 1,150%, with Democrats fueling the violence, making it increasingly dangerous for immigration officers to carry out their duties.
That last bit is why the ICE agents are my real heroes this year. It's an agency that is tasked with dealing with some off-the-charts dangerous people and the Democrats have been trying to officially and unofficially get in its agents' way all year. Seeing prominent elected officials constantly badmouth ICE and portray what the agency does as illegitimate has made a very dangerous job even more perilous. Back in October I wrote that it's a shame that ICE agents can't also round up the loudmouth Democrats who are trying to get them killed.
Barack Obama's real legacy is that Democrats already despise law enforcement. Their hostility towards ICE is so intense that it is going to keep putting agents in danger. My modest proposal is that every Dem politician who tries to thwart what ICE is doing should have to spend time in a holding cell with some of the most violent people arrested until they're deported. Hey, if it takes a little extra time to process the paperwork, so be it. You know how slow federal bureaucracies can be.
Cheers to ICE and the very important, life-saving work that its agents do. Please remember that there are a lot of patriotic, grateful Americans who are very aware that you aren't the bad guys. Fingers crossed that 2026 will bring you a reason to arrest JB Pritzker.
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