As Simon Black points out in his latest weekly intelligence commentary, it is now YOUR responsibility to enforce the government's laws.
What happened:
Are you an expert at identifying forged documents, and fake IDs? How about investigating immigration history? If not, you may want to think twice before becoming a landlord, investing in real estate, or opening a homeless shelter.
According to Texas law, upheld by a Federal Appeals Court, you could be held legally liable for “harboring” an illegal immigrant.
The law was originally struck down, but has been reinstated by an appeals court. The court claims that the law could not be used against landlords or immigrant aid organizations because they could not be considered to be harboring an illegal immigrant. Unless they actively protect or shield the immigrant from authorities, they cannot substantially fear prosecution, the court said.
In their decision, the court used the testimony of the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety to support the fact that the groups suing would not be prosecuted under the law.
What this means:
Then government is passing its duties on to you. You are now expected to be a legal expert on all sorts of topics just to make sure you don’t end up liable for harboring illegal activity.
Just because the current interpretation of the law doesn’t go after landlords, that doesn’t mean it will remain that way. Laws in America clearly have a way of migrating towards whatever interpretation fits the ideas and desires of whoever is in charge at any given time.
Texans will have to wait until the vague “harboring” provision of the law is used against them to change the law. Until then, they need to be better at investigation than the police in order to be safe.
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And in another notable development, Black muses that the Federal Government really needs to relax the hiring standards for agents who get guns and badges to enforce federal law… said no one ever. Actually, the Department of Homeland Security said just that.
According to an internal memo, the DHS will loosen hiring requirements for border patrol agents. In order to hire the number of agents required by President Trump’s border security plan. To hire more than 6,000 additional agents, they will need to do away with certain standards, including the polygraph test which a majority of applicants fail, meaning less qualified, easily corrupted border security will be hired.
What this means:
Why should you need to pass a polygraph test to get your license to kill? This is reminiscent of the relaxed standards implemented in order to bloat the U.S. Army forces to get enough manpower during the Vietnam War. Stopping the spread of communism was so important, that they hired a bunch of drug addicts, criminals, and low educated soldiers to carry out the policies of the United States government overseas.
It took the military decades to recover to the point of having intelligent, disciplined, effective soldiers. Nevermind the damage it did to the poor civilians who came accross these soldiers.
So what exactly can we expect from the same tactic to hire Border Patrol Agents? How will the DHS maintain high quality, effective, and disciplined personnel that do not pose a risk to immigrants, peers, and American civilians? They probably won’t.