The top Democrat on the House’s immigration committee wants to compensate illegal migrants and also punish American law enforcement officers for enforcing Congress’s immigration laws.
“The people that have been inflicting this harm [on migrants] need to be prosecuted,” Indian immigrant Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said Friday at a “shadow hearing” she hosted. “They need to be brought before us, and they need to be held account [sic] for the trauma that they have created, and we are going to have to have some form of reparation for the kids and the families that have been traumatized through all of this.”
Jayapal’s March 27 comments spotlight the apparent emotional horror that many progressives feel towards the enforcement of United States borders and citizenship rules.
Progressive empathy for illegal migrants — including criminal migrants — has largely replaced the left-wing empathy for poorer citizens, such as industrial workers in the 1930s or many African-Americans in the 1960s.
But this recent redirection of empathy from citizens towards illegal migrants is a fundamental attack on American society — because it rejects the preferential and reciprocal obligations among American citizens.
For example, President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, caused immense economic harm to ordinary citizens by welcoming at least 8 million “inadmissible” migrants into Americans’ communities, workplaces, and welfare programs.
The deliberate welcome for millions of migrants by Mayorkas, Jayapal, and other progressives has in effect killed many Americans, including Laken Riley. Their narcissistic empathy also caused the deaths of thousands of migrants.
Progressives imported so many illegal migrants that the many traumas of migrant deportations are being used to justify opposition to sending migrants back to their home countries.
The redirection of concern from citizens towards illegal migrants is seen across the United States. In Fairfax County, Virginia, for example, the local Democratic prosecutor urged the release of an adult migrant who was accused of sexually groping teenage girls at a high school. The migrant had been allowed to enroll in the school because the local progressives were trying to welcome him into American society.
Many Americans are victimized by migrants, including violent migrants, who are sheltered by Democrat politicians in so-called “sanctuary cities.” The most recent victim of these amnesty zones is Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old student who was killed by a Democrat-protected migrant in Chicago.
“The system did not fail Sheridan — that worked exactly as the Democrats intended,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on March 25, adding:
You had Democrats in charge of the White House and in charge in the city of Chicago. Open borders policies, sanctuary cities policies, they coddled the criminal illegal alien. They empowered, they allowed this to happen and that’s why we’re so angry about it.
The Democrats’ redirection of empathy away from citizens — including the many citizens victimized by migrants — was demonstrated by multiple women at Jayapal’s one-sided “shadow hearing.”
“We have to always keep fighting for an end to this cruelty and threat to the health of our children and communities,” Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-MN) said about children who were brought to the United States illegally. [emphasis added throughout]
“The administration has terrorized our communities and mine in the Willamette Valley,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR), as she complained about ICE enforcement of Congress’s immigration law in Oregon.
“These [illegal migrants] are folks who are our neighbors … They do the jobs that keep our city running,” said Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX). “I can’t imagine seeing my kid in a jail cell just because of where he was born, just because of what language he speaks at home.”
“I had a constituent in my district who actually came here as an unaccompanied minor ended up getting caught up in the system,” said Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC). “We finally got her out of detention.”
“I’m beyond repulsed by what the Trump administration is doing to families across our country,” she said.
“This issue is personal for me as well,” said Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL). “I was an immigrant child myself, learning how to navigate a new country and depending on the grace and kindness of relatives and, of course, on complete strangers toward my family and myself.”
“I still cannot believe that we are doing this to our own children,” said Jayapal, who shed some tears during the hearing.
U.S.-born President Donald Trump is the outsider, Jayapal argued: “When the founders put into the Constitution the idea that Congress would have power, they assumed that the party that was in control of Congress would stand up to a dictatorial, authoritarian president.”
Jayapal did not mention the many American children killed by what she called “our” migrants.
