Oregon mayors have joined the chorus of voices demanding ICE stop enforcement. But I think those demands show a poor understanding of how law enforcement should work.

In our country, we make laws ourselves through the electoral process, and ask that they be enforced without discrimination. We don’t demand privileged treatment. We don’t ask the enforcers to give us a pass because of our status or our politics, or because we think we are nicer or smarter than the lawmakers we elected. We hired the police, and we gave them the laws we wanted enforced: That means we don’t spit on their uniforms or call them fascists or use our political weight to demand that they stand down, whenever we feel self-righteous or justified.

But generations of Americans have been taught that laws are optional. People who have noble intentions can expect to be exempt. Recent federal leadership has reinforced exactly that standard of selective, subjective application of the laws.

Many authoritarian governments use arbitrary and politically motivated enforcement as just another tool to perpetuate their power. In our country, law enforcement agencies are not supposed to pick and choose their enforcement activities based on political pressure. That means police can’t be expected to duck out whenever angry extremists call them names, or a presidential administration tells them to stand down for political reasons, or when a poorly informed coalition of mayors tries to run them out of their jurisdictions. Police agencies are obligated to enforce the laws that are written by our representatives without bending to the will of mayors, mobs or anyone else.

To believe that law enforcement should be “flexible” and go away when they are told is an adolescent viewpoint that our leaders — and hopefully our citizenry — should have grown out of. Allowing laws to be enforced or ignored at the discretion of mayors or governors would be to allow our Republic to take on the worst aspects of dictatorships and monarchies.

If we don’t like the laws, we have a mechanism to change them. And that mechanism doesn’t involve mob behavior or mayoral grandstanding. We need intelligent mayors with a mature understanding of civics and of Constitutional governance, serving a constituency with similar qualities.

Tom Hannah
Eugene