Stein will ‘wait and see’ on whether to help Trump, ICE on illegals

I always thought it was a crime to refuse to cooperate with law enforcement officers attempting to do their jobs. (OBSTRUCTION, anyone?)

We are about to have our second consecutive governor who leveraged a poor performance in the attorney general’s office into a four-year (or more) stay in that big house on Blount Street.

Josh Stein was talking to his comms department — known to the rest of us as The N&O — recently about president-elect Trump’s pronouncements on stepping up immigration law enforcement:

[…] The Trump transition has moved quickly to announce key administration staff and appointees who will lead the border management and deportation efforts. Within days of his victory on Election Night, Trump announced he would tap Tom Homan, the acting director of ICE during his first administration, to serve as his “border czar.” Since then, the transition has named several more appointments that will be tasked with carrying out immigration policy, including leaders of ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, both of whom were announced Thursday. […]

While some Democratic leaders were quick to vow to fight the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, others, including incoming North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, have said they’re waiting to see specific plans and policies before they decide how they will respond.

“Well, one thing about President Trump is he says a lot, and then you don’t know what the actual policy behind the bluster is going to be,” Stein said during an appearance on ABC News on Sunday. “And so I have to wait to see what he actually proposes as opposed to what he says through Twitter or any other social media platform.”

Asked if he wasn’t ruling out working with Trump on some deportations, Stein said that under current law, “if folks break the law and harm North Carolinians, they get deported as it is.” “Folks who are law-abiding, deporting them is not a priority at all,” Stein added. “They are instrumental to our communities. They’re instrumental to our economy.”[…]

If they are HERE and have not followed the proper procedure for lawful immigration, they are violating the law.  Even if they don’t rob or rape anyone. Mexico is tougher than we are on people who don’t abide by immigration laws.

Failing to cooperate with lawmen trying to do their jobs — like, say, refusing to provide ID upon request — often leads to a criminal charge called obstruction.  If you purposely do something — especially something dishonest — that makes it harder for a cop to do their job, you too can be hit with an obstruction charge.  

It seems to me that if you are a local lawman — and you become aware that you are holding a suspect ICE is looking for — willfully and knowingly releasing them before ICE can take custody or just not informing ICE about your prisoner counts as obstruction.

I’m convinced that we just haven’t had anybody on the scene with enough cojones to call lil’ Josh and his crew on this.  But I suspect that will change after January 20 and the arrival of border czar Tom Homan.  

One has to wonder if our smarmy, candy-ass new governor will be this mouthy when Homan and his crew arrive on the scene to do their job and enforce federal law. (I can hear lil’ Josh’s sobs right now as Homan’s boys shackle him and drag him off to federal prison on an obstruction charge. *Who knows?  Maybe he and state attorney general ‘purty-mouf’  can share a cell.*) 

Back in the 1960s, following the passage of the federal civil rights laws, there was a problem with getting certain local and state officials (Democrats) to follow federal law.   Desegregation – like federal immigration law today – was the law of the land.  Since the unpleasantness of the early to mid-1860s, we’ve been told about how federal law wins any conflict that may exist with state and local laws.

In the 1960s, federal officials were sent out into the hinterlands to force compliance – by arrests or otherwise – with the new federal laws.  Lil’ Josh’s daddy was active as an attorney during that time. *Maybe he can explain it all to him. *

I hope, hope, hope Tom Homan and his crew come see Josh Stein and put him to the test first.