Tancredo Calls for Illegal Raid on Illegal Immigrants

Colorado Representative (and, I almost forgot, Presidential candidate) Tom Tancredo apparently had called on the Immigration and Customs Service to raid a news conference put on by Senator Dick Durbin because there might have been illegal immigrants there.

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a Republican presidential candidate whose fierce opposition to illegal immigration is the center of his campaign, contacted the immigration service yesterday demanding that agents raid a senator’s news conference.

The afternoon event on Capitol Hill was held by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the leading sponsor of a bill that would give legal status to illegal immigrants who are high school graduates, if they attend college or serve in the United States military for two years. The bill is scheduled to come up for an important procedural vote in the Senate this morning.

Mr. Tancredo announced yesterday morning that he had contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency, calling for the arrest of illegal immigrants he said would attend the news conference.

“If we can’t enforce our laws inside the building where American laws are made, where can we enforce them?” Mr. Tancredo said in a statement.

As far as the article indicates and as far as I can determine, there was pretty much zero evidence that any illegal immigrants actually in attendance at the press conference. Without such evidence, of course, a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement would have most likely been illegal.

No doubt the irony of this escapes Mr. Tancredo.

FILED UNDER: 2008 Election, Borders and Immigration, , , , , ,
Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. Irony isn’t the strong suit of the anti-illegals crowd or immigration officials. In the case of the later, we’re allowing 32 North Korean refugees into the country on humanitarian purposes while at the same time deporting some 85 women who were going through the legal immigration process only because their husbands died before their immigration paperwork was done.

    I live in South Florida, my wife works at our local Catholic Church. I’m surprised ICE doesn’t do a raid at a church with a large amount of immigrants. Maybe ICE is worried about bad PR that would happen, then I can point out cases of bad PR that the agency dove into head first also.

    Bill

  2. Spencer says:

    Tancredo is an embarrassment to my party, the Republican party. Was he envisioning ICE agents questioning people at the conference to see if they had an accent or dark skin? He needs to be stopped. ReasonableRepublicans.blogspot.com

  3. DC Loser says:

    The Tancredo-istas have taken over the Republican Party. If not stopped, the party will self-destruct. California GOP learned this lesson after Prop 187 was passed when Pete Wilson thought he could exploit the issue.

  4. Triumph says:

    As far as the article indicates and as far as I can determine, there was pretty much zero evidence that any illegal immigrants actually in attendance at the press conference.

    Tancredo is a patriot. As Bush has graciously shown, evidence is not a precondition for allowing the government to pick up people and jail them.

    All we need is just some vague sense that someone is doing something wrong and the government can lock them up indefinitely.

    Given his courageous leadership and his refusal to know-tow to the politically correct crowd, Tancredo is the natural successor to Bush’s strong leadership.

  5. floyd says:

    DC Loser;
    What difference does it make if the Republicans self-destruct, if the alternative is that they become a part of the fifth column supporting the intentional invasion started by Vicente Fox .

  6. DinTN says:

    As if the Republican party needs help in self-destructing. Ha. Ha.
    Tom Tancredo is a true patriot and I along with many, many other Americans applaud his effort to rid this county of illegal invaders.
    Take back America!