Here We Go Again

“Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.” Deuteronomy 16:19 (KJV) f

The midterms are weeks away, and American citizens are once again an afterthought

Here we go again. The midterm elections are only weeks away, and as a matter of fact, I have already received my assignment to work the polls on November 3. I was glad when I saw it. I had told myself I would not do it again, yet here I am, getting ready to go back down and sit at that table one more time. But as Election Day approaches, the rhetoric heats up right along with it. The language gets hotter, the accusations get louder, and the whole atmosphere starts to feel as though something is about to happen that will whip up enough fury to turn America's attention wherever the politicians want it. And of course, the hot topic since Donald Trump took office for the second time has been immigration: the crackdown on illegal immigration and the enforcement actions playing out in our communities.

I saw it for myself. I was on my way to drop my grandson off for a haircut when I noticed protesters standing along the side of the road, protesting ICE right here in South Jersey. There were not even that many of them, but there they were. And I thought to myself, I would be willing to bet that most of those protesters do not live in the communities they claim to be defending. They likely live farther out in the suburbs, yet they stand on our roadsides arguing to keep illegal immigrants in Camden County, in places like Lindenwold and Clementon, where the people who actually live there carry the consequences. We see these communities packed tight, and I do not believe the packing is an accident. Noncitizens cannot vote, but every one of them is counted in the census, and the census decides how many seats in Congress a state receives and how much federal money flows into a district. So who is speaking for the American citizens who live in these neighborhoods? Who is speaking for the families who have to absorb the cost of policies they never voted for?

This past week gave us a clear picture of where the Democratic Party's priorities lie, and it was not a good week for Democrats at all.

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Start in Michigan. On October 8, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed met in Grand Rapids for their first Senate debate, and Rogers towered over him. He went straight at the title El-Sayed loves to wear. "He's not really a doctor," Rogers said, adding that if El-Sayed tried to treat a patient, he would go to jail. El-Sayed does hold a medical degree from Columbia, but he chose public health over practice, and he has never held a medical license in Michigan or New York. He has spent his campaign calling himself a physician while never having practiced medicine outside the rotations he completed in medical school. Rogers also pressed him on a 2016 clip that resurfaced that week, in which El-Sayed said he held dual U.S. and Egyptian citizenship, even though his campaign had said otherwise. And Rogers charged that some of El-Sayed's donors support the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda, accusations El-Sayed called lies. Those charges will be argued all the way to November, but the credentials and the citizenship are questions El-Sayed created for himself.

What stayed with me was Israel. Asked whether he would provide defensive weapons to Israel if it were attacked, El-Sayed said he does not want our tax dollars buying weapons for other countries. Asked again, he repeated it, and Rogers answered that this meant he would not even support the Iron Dome. Think about what that means. The Iron Dome is what stands between Israeli families and the rockets fired at them. Take it away and you leave a nation surrounded by enemies defenseless. This debate came one day after the third anniversary of October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered some twelve hundred people, raped women, slaughtered children and infants in their homes, and dragged hostages into tunnels beneath Gaza. Three years later, a man who wants to sit in the United States Senate cannot bring himself to say he would help Israel defend itself from the next attack. He would rather spend that money, he says, on unconditional support for kids in our schools. That is the lie El-Sayed stands on, and a man with his education knows better. Under the agreement signed in 2016, most of the military aid America sends Israel, $3.3 billion a year plus $500 million for missile defense like the Iron Dome, comes as financing that Israel spends buying weapons from American companies, which means much of that money circles right back into American factories and American paychecks. And cutting it would not send one extra dollar to a classroom in Detroit or Flint. Foreign aid and school funding come out of entirely different pots, and most of what pays for Michigan's schools comes from Lansing and local taxpayers. Denying Israel its defense would not buy a single textbook in Michigan. It would only leave Israeli families more exposed to the next barrage of rockets. Somehow the children of Israel never seem to make his list, and the children of Michigan are only on it when he needs a line for a debate.

Then there was New York. On the evening of October 7, Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended a vigil in Union Square organized by Israelis for Peace to remember the victims of that day. He stood there stone-faced through the ceremony, looking for all the world like a man who did not want to be there, and the activists who once cheered him turned on him anyway. Several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters overran the space, waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, forcing organizers behind police barriers, and calling the mayor a traitor. Earlier that same day, protesters had gathered outside City Hall to accuse him of abandoning their cause, and that night some of them rushed after him as he left. Remember that his own anniversary statement acknowledged the horrific war crimes of October 7 while once again accusing Israel of genocide. It did not matter. One evening spent standing with grieving Israeli families was enough for the far left to brand him a traitor. That is the coalition Democrats are building their future on, and it devours anyone who fails to go far enough. It reminded me of Russia in 1917, when crowds in the streets of Petrograd forced the tsar from his throne, and the revolution that followed went on to consume many of the very men who had led it. A movement that runs on rage never stops at its enemies. Sooner or later it turns on its own.

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And then, the very next afternoon, came Marble Hill. On October 8, ICE agents moved to arrest Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican national in this country illegally, as he sat in his SUV with his five-year-old son in the back seat. According to ICE, he refused orders to get out, smashed into two government vehicles, and then accelerated toward officers. One agent fired seven rounds, and a bullet struck Belgal in the neck below his left ear. The wound was superficial, and thank God the boy was not hurt. Within hours, protesters were clashing with police in the streets, Governor Hochul was demanding a halt to ICE enforcement in New York, and Mayor Mamdani called the agency rotten to its core and spent two hours on the phone pressing the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security to release the man. Those negotiations failed. The next day a federal judge blocked his deportation. It is as if illegal immigrants are being given an incentive to flee from ICE: the more damage done in the encounter, the more protection they can expect from federal judges.

Consider this. If you are an American citizen caught driving without insurance two or three times, you can eventually be arrested for it. The penalties depend on the state and on how many offenses you have, but repeat violations can lead to jail time. Miss your court date and a warrant can be issued for your arrest, and if an officer later runs into you, whether you are driving, walking, or simply going about your day, and finds that warrant, you are going to jail. As an American citizen, I cannot simply walk away from the law. Yet a man in this country illegally can run from federal agents, and the mayor of New York gets on the phone with the White House to try to negotiate his release. This was a man with a grand larceny conviction, a pending case for selling fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine to an undercover detective, alleged ties to the Trinitarios gang, and, according to the Secretary of Homeland Security, status as a target of the investigation into the shooting of a federal officer last year. Tell me if that is fair.

Now imagine that an American Black man was behind the wheel of that car with his five-year-old son in the back seat. He has a conviction on his record and pending drug charges, and the authorities have come to arrest him. Instead of stopping, he hits the gas, rams the officers' vehicles, and puts his own child in harm's way. Would we still be hearing the same argument? "ICE shouldn't have shot him. They should have known there was a child in that car." The agents say they did not know the boy was there. But the man driving knew. He knew exactly who was sitting behind him when he decided to run. And this was not his first time running. Agents tried to arrest him in September, and he got away. When people believe they can flee and be defended for it, that choice creates danger for the agents, for the child, and for everyone else on a crowded city street.

None of this means officers get a pass. New York's police commissioner says Belgal was pulling into a parking space when a plainclothes federal officer approached with his gun drawn, and seven rounds fired on a busy street deserve a full and honest investigation. The child was not responsible for his father's choices, and his safety should never have been an afterthought for anyone involved. But questioning the agents does not erase the decisions of the man who put his son in that car and stepped on the gas. Now let that have been an American Black man. He would be facing prison time. His child could be taken into custody, and he could lose that child altogether, all because he chose to run. Nobody would be calling the White House to negotiate his release. Nobody would be marching through the Bronx in his name. So how come illegal immigrants get treated better than American citizens? That is the question we should be asking. And if we truly believe in equal protection and due process, the answer has to apply to everyone, whatever their race, citizenship, or immigration status.

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Put the week together and the pattern is hard to miss. In Michigan, a Democratic nominee who calls himself a doctor without a license cannot tell voters plainly whether he would help an ally defend its children from rockets. In New York, a Democratic mayor gets called a traitor by his own movement for standing at a vigil, then turns around the next day and spends his political capital fighting for a man with a criminal record who ran from federal agents with a child in the car. And on the roadsides of South Jersey, people who do not live in our neighborhoods hold signs on behalf of everyone except the citizens who do. Through all of it, the American citizen, and especially the American Black citizen whose ancestors were here before most of these debates were ever imagined, is treated as an afterthought, expected to show up, pay the taxes, follow the laws, and vote the right way without asking what any of it has done for us.

On November 3, I will be at my table early, checking names, handing out ballots, and watching my neighbors come through the door. I will see the retirees who have voted in every election since the Voting Rights Act, the young mothers with babies on their hips, and the working men stopping in on their way to the job. They follow the law. They pay their taxes. They have every right to be here, and many of them come from families who have been here for centuries. When they step into that booth, I hope they remember this week. The midterms are coming, the rhetoric is heating up, and every one of us should be asking who, exactly, is looking out for us.