On no other issue does The New York Times betray its liberal slant as it does on illegal immigration, and on Wednesday reporter Liz Robbins reacted with predictably liberal alarm in her “news” story about a sheriff in New York State who had the audacity to agree to help enforce national immigration law through Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE: “Sheriff Joins Federal Immigration Crackdown, in a First for the State.”
The bias came early and heavily, starting with the “undocumented immigrants” label:
Here in the birthplace of “Uncle Sam,” a former steel town built by Irish and Italian arrivals, the local sheriff has embraced a federal program designed to catch undocumented immigrants in county jails.
Naturally, a tone of liberal horror quickly crept in:
His decision to do so -- a first for New York State -- in a jail that houses relatively few foreign-born inmates has outraged immigration activists, Democratic lawmakers and, notably, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, whose Albany statehouse office is in Troy’s backyard.
In January, the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office became one of only 75 in the country to sign an agreement allowing corrections officers to perform the functions of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, as part of a program known as 287(g)....
On cue, Robbins took New York’s partisan Democratic governor’s word as gospel:
Governor Cuomo and activists warned that 287(g) undermines trust between immigrants and law enforcement and makes immigrants less likely to report crimes, the reason many police chiefs across the country cite for not participating.
....
Census statistics from 2016 show only about 5 percent of residents are foreign-born in the county (a figure that may not count undocumented immigrants), and most reside in Troy, the county seat.
It took Robbins several paragraphs to get to Sheriff Russo’s reasonable rationale:
He cited a 2016 double homicide of two residents who were Mexican citizens in North Troy. The four people charged were also Mexican nationals, three of whom are in the Rensselaer jail now.
....
But activists and lawmakers are concerned that the sheriff’s seal of approval will embolden patrol officers to act, informally, as immigration agents, too.
....
Asked why he did not hold public forums when applying for the program, Mr. Russo said he did not want to breed violent protests. “I’m just not going to host public forums because they become Chinese fire drills,” he said.
What was even more pathetic was that even the positive comments at the end ended up back-handed:
The sheriff’s grandfather came from Naples and opened an Italian grocery store in Troy after arriving in 1909. Rocco DeFazio, 66, the town’s unofficial historian, whose own grocery and pizza restaurant lies a little more than a mile from the jail, said he did not agree with the ICE partnership. But he wanted to correct any misconceptions that his friend could be Troy’s version of Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona who was convicted (and later pardoned by Mr. Trump) of criminal contempt for his treatment of Latinos.
“I grew up with Pat,” Mr. DeFazio said. “He’s a very considerate guy. And he’s not a hardened racist. He’s not. I think it’s a little over his head.”
With friends like these...
