Would Jim Zbick turn in Anne Frank?

Recently the mayor of Oakland, California, warned the residents of Oakland that agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, were planning to conduct raids in Oakland.  Columnist Jim Zbick pointed out in the March 5 issue of the Times News that the mayor was openly defying Federal law.  He quotes an ICE official comparing what the mayor did to “a gang lookout yelling ‘police.’”

Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who helped to hide Anne Frank and her family, was also breaking the law.  She was defying the law then in force in the Netherlands.  She had an obligation to turn in the Frank family, but she didn’t.

When Thoreau refused to pay taxes because of his opposition to slavery, he was breaking the law.  When the Suffragettes demonstrated at the White House, they were breaking the law.  When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, she was breaking the law. 

The laws they were breaking were laws passed by government officials and enforced by government employees.  They all believed in a higher law.  Our country’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is based on that higher law.  “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Note that the rights enumerated in the Declaration precede government.  We are born with them.

I am fully aware that the people deported by ICE are not taken to a concentration camp to be killed.  (I should qualify that; some people fleeing the violence of El Salvador or Venezuela will be killed if they are returned.)  Nonetheless, Mr. Zbick might want to review the definition of “genocide.”

The word was coined by Rafael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.  Lemkin defined genocide as “a coordinated strategy to destroy a group of people.”  ICE raids, often done in early morning hours, split families, leave children behind, and are completely arbitrary.  These actions are beneath us as a people.

And please, oh please, do not ask me “what part of illegal don’t you understand?”  The vast majority of deportees are “status offenders.”  They have committed no defined crime except to immigrate without papers.  If you want to build Trump’s wall, go ahead, build the damn thing.  But stop the deportations.  

I am proud of the mayor of Oakland.  I am proud we have sanctuary cities.  I am proud that there are still people like Miep Gies who do the right thing.