Sheriff Withdraws Deputies From Detention Facility, Leaves Children Less Safe
Move over, Scott Israel. America has a new worst sheriff in the person of Richard Wiles.
Wiles is the sheriff of the El Paso County, Texas, site of a tent city that houses illegal immigrant minors that are being detained. Clearly, in such a facility, security is paramount, and federal officials have asked that sheriff’s deputies provide assistance at the facility.
Sheriff Wiles has forbidden any of his deputies from doing so, however.
“The Sheriff’s Office will not be working at these facilities, as we don’t support the current administration’s position of separating children simply to discourage illegal immigration,” a statement from Sheriff Wiles said.
Police officers and sheriff’s deputies often work such jobs to supplement their income, but Wiles says that any of his men working at the Tornillo, Texas, facility would send the wrong idea.
“I just thought that if the citizens saw that we were working there in an off-duty capacity, it may be (seen) as if we were approving of the administration’s policy, and it would hurt our relationship with the community that we serve,” Wiles told Texas Monthly.
Wiles is hardly the only Texas lawman who has used their clout to oppose the Trump administration’s policies. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has also gone on record as being against them, invoking the name of Jesus in one particular tweet.
This is all well and good, of course, until you consider what the roles of Chief Acevedo and Sheriff Wiles are: to protect and uphold law and order.
How are law and order being served by God-baiting tweets?
How are the minors in these facilities any safer because Sheriff Wiles refuses to let his deputies help secure them?
Do either one of these men think that the problem is just going to go away merely because they sent out a tweet or made a futile gesture that actually makes children less safe?
This is arguably the biggest problem when it comes to how we’re handling the debate over illegal immigrant families being separated: there’s little talk about the substance of the matter and a whole lot of fact-free virtue signaling.
Whether it’s Peter Fonda’s sick tweets or journalism on the subject that doesn’t actually mention why this is happening but simply presents what is happening in the most empurpled way possible, the issue has been so thoroughly debased it’s almost impossible to actually have a national discussion about the implications of this policy.
Sure, Wiles may have gotten some good press from the liberal media. What he’s done has made absolutely no one any safer — particularly the minor illegal immigrants he purports to protect. Nice work.
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