Immigration – Brian Stalboerger

Running to represent the citizens of south Maplewood and Woodbury

With contentious issues, we can’t just ignore laws we don’t like. We have to enforce the laws. And if a law is bad, we should change the law.

Practical:

We need secure borders and immigration reform at the national level

Blanket sanctuary city or state laws create long-term problems where criminal elements can blend in. The precept that immigrant communities not cooperating with police on reporting crimes requires a total lack of cooperation with federal immigration authorities is a false binary choice. There can be immunity and discretion given for victims who need to obtain help without eliminating cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

During the ICE enforcement operations, local police should have been allowed to set up force protection and perimeter barriers while ICE and CBP were serving arrest warrants of criminals. This could have prevented the conflicts that led to deaths on our streets. Pitting our local LE against federal LE through orders or rhetoric was horrible leadership.

The Minnesota BCA should have been allowed to participate in the investigation of the officer involved shootings from the start.

4th and 6th Amendment protections requiring warrants to cross the threshold of a home and the right to legal counsel must be respected.

ICE and CBP wore masks in order to prevent being doxxed and their families harassed. We cannot allow these precedents to be set. The best solution to this is to come down hard on any domestic terrorist doing such things. LE family members and public harassment of LE must be off-limits. If needed, we should add tougher mandatory sentencing for such crimes. In the short run, ICE and CPB should have worn large badge numbers easily visible that would allow for citizens and residents to identify them to their departments in the case of any wrongdoing. We should not allow federal agents to be masked and we should protect them so they don’t feel the need to.

Philosophical:

I want to acknowledge a great set of Americans in this story, and that is the immigrants who have followed the rules and done the work and paid the costs to come here legally. We welcome and celebrate these new Americans. We’ve made it really hard to come here legally, and too easy to come here illegally. It’s pretty obvious that true reform must reverse that.

This is a problem created by both parties at the federal level, so it makes it difficult for us to address this at the state level. I understand that some policies I disagree with in Minnesota were passed to deal with a problem created by the federal government. With whatever influence I gain as a state senator, I would encourage our federal government to compromise in order to lock in the secure border that was put in place by the Trump Administration in exchange for a path to legal residency (not citizenship) for some of those that came here illegally. In order to retain that principle of incentivizing the right path, only those that came here legally should be eligible for full citizenship.

It is not good for anyone to deport a father who was brought here as a toddler thirty years ago, only knows English, and has never known another country as home. His dependent American citizen children might then become dependent on the state, or hate America for deporting their father. This is a bad law currently, but it is the law. Instead of just expecting the Trump Administration or any previous or future president to ignore that law, let’s change it.

Americans deserve a solid and enduring solution based on compromise that can permanently solve this issue by building mechanisms into law to make it painful for future administrations to ignore border enforcement. A country without borders is no country at all.

When it comes to federal enforcement, though, we must remember that even in valid enforcement of law, there can be a good way and a bad way to do it. Silence about federal overreach in enforcement of a law you like will do nothing but diminish your own claim when it’s federal overreach in a law you don’t agree with. Both sides want to point out hypocrisy in the other, right and left. That’s not my intent in posting this video. Without judging any of the individuals from 2016 or 2026, I think it is a worthy reflection to hear the words of a guy on the right who was protesting the federal government under Obama and notice how similar they were to complaints of intimidation and fear during Operation Metro Surge. I think the lesson is the same thing the Founders wanted to impress on us about centralized government. It’s a powerful weapon that needs to be always kept on the leash.
This man was shot by an FBI agent the day after this interview.