The new Fugitive Slave Law
I suppose it was only a matter of time before this entered the conversation:
New plans are being discussed in Jefferson City [Mo.] this week, including a proposed bounty hunter program for illegal immigrants. The proposed bill would pay people to catch those they believe to be in the United States illegally.
Senate Bill 72 was pre-filed to the Missouri legislature. It is sponsored by House Representative David Gregory. Gregory wants to pay Missourians $1000 to find and detain illegal immigrants in the state.
The first part of the bill reads that someone in Missouri illegally is “prohibited from voting in any election, receiving any permit or license to drive, receive any public benefit, and becoming a legal resident of this state.”
It’s important to note that it is already illegal to vote if you are not a citizen.
It also states the Department of Public Safety should develop an information system for people to report violations.
Civil rights attorneys are alarmed of course. But honestly, they’re already going so far with this already that I can’t see why they wouldn’t propose this and if the courts are going along with everything else they’re doing it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t see this as perfectly reasonable. After all, they’re talking about ending birthright citizenship. Why would a little law that helped precipitate the civil war be a problem?
Here’s a piece by Harold Meyerson from 2018 on this subject:
In case you don’t remember your U.S. history: An 1842 court ruling absolved states of any duty to cooperate in the recapture of former slaves who’d freed themselves by fleeing to the North.
In response, as part of the Compromise of 1850, the Congress passed and President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, which not only required state and local governmental officials to aid owners and their agents who’d come North to capture and re-enslave the runaways, but also required the same level of cooperation from all citizens. If a slaver was in the act of recapture, bystanders were required to help out.
Not surprisingly, the North greeted the new law with fury and resistance. Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan and Wisconsin all enacted “personal liberty laws” — the 1850s equivalent of California’s sanctuary state law — forbidding public officials from cooperating with the slave owners or the federal forces sent to back them up, denying the use of their jails to house the captives, and requiring jury trials to decide if the owners could make off with their abductees.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which gave states the power to enact laws not specifically preempted by federal authority. (The Southern-dominated U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling on the eve of the Civil War).
Opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act also took to the streets (and jury rooms, where verdicts were rendered that freed some of the captives). Crowds would form to oppose and resist, sometimes forcibly, the apprehensions of African Americans.
According to H. Robert Baker, a historian at Georgia State University, “Whole sections of Milwaukee, Chicago, New York City and Boston became no-go zones for slave catchers.” Confronted with this level of resistance, Fillmore sent in federal troops to assist and protect the slave catchers.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but in our dispute over immigrants in the country illegally and our predecessors’ dispute over fugitive slaves, it takes no leap of logic or imagination to find the rhymes. Now, as then, one part of the country (President Trump’s disproportionately rural, white nationalist base) has enlisted federal power to enforce a legal regime in a different part of the country (racially diverse, immigrant-heavy cities) that views the law as morally repulsive and destructive of the social fabric.
Just as the slave catchers argued, speciously, that freed Negroes imperiled the antebellum North, today’s anti-immigrant forces, beginning with Trump, argue that immigrants pose a threat to public safety, though crime has fallen precipitously during the past quarter-century.
The only “crime” that most undocumented immigrants have committed — and the only one that places them in federal legal jeopardy — is that of being undocumented. Likewise, the only “crime” that most escaped slaves had committed — and the only one that placed them in federal legal jeopardy — was escaping.
Meyerson suggested at the time that there should be civil disobedience to protect undocumented immigrants, even sit-ins at ICE offices. I haven’t heard word of anything like that. I suppose everyone’s waiting to see what actually happens.
Trump said this morning that all undocumented people, not just criminals, have to be deported. And he also said that their American children will have to go with them because he “doesn’t want to break up families.” He did seem to make some exception for DREAMers, saying that he’ll talk to the Democrats about that. (I’m sure that just about putting together some proposal with a heinous poison pill the Dems can’t vote for so they can blame them for refusing to help the DREAMers.)
He once again declared that there will be a moment when a “beautiful young woman is being dragged out crying” and everyone will be upset but “we have to do it.” I think he’s looking forward to it.