Theater of the absurd: When ICE shows up, SLO combusts | Opinion

I’m what the government calls a Permanent Resident Alien — a title that sounds like I should be green and slimy, but actually means I jumped through the bureaucratic bonfire of legal immigration to live in the United States legally.

Forms, interviews, fees, fingerprints and blood tests. It was a masterclass in patience and humility. But that’s what legal entry is — an honor, not a birthright. You don’t get to roll up uninvited and expect the concierge treatment.

I say this, not as some flag-draped Fox News clone, but as someone born a white man in post-independence Nigeria and who has lived in Islamic Zanzibar and Abu Dhabi. I know what it means to be a guest in someone else’s country. You respect the rules, the culture or you risk the boot, or worse, a flogging!

So, forgive me if I don’t join the collective swoon over the recent ICE arrest in San Luis Obispo. Yes, the agents wore masks, but let’s cut through the crocodile tears. The only illegality involved here was the immigration status of the person being arrested.

Let’s start with the boring but important bit. Being in the United States without legal status is illegal. That’s not some right-wing fever dream, it’s codified in federal law. Enter illegally? Overstay your visa? Get lost in the system? It doesn’t matter. You’re breaking the law.

ICE agents, contrary to local headlines, are not villainous specters haunting our city. They’re federal officers doing their job. If you don’t like the optics, fair enough, but since when did “bad vibes” constitute a legal argument? If enforcement is now determined by the emotional comfort of The Tribune news team, we may as well outsource our criminal code to Instagram influencers.

Let’s not pretend ICE is kicking down doors in the dead of night. These pop-up arrests are the immigration version of DUI checkpoints. Announced in advance, perfectly legal and apparently effective. Funny how no one screams “human rights violation” when CHP sets up on El Camino Real. However, mention border enforcement in San Luis Obispo, and suddenly it’s 1930s Berlin.

While we’re discussing legality, let’s not forget that even illegal immigrants are entitled to due process. That means a hearing, a lawyer and the chance to make their case. What they’re not entitled to is to simply stay here indefinitely because someone stuck a “No Human Being is Illegal” bumper sticker on their Prius.

Here’s the bit no one wants to say out loud: Deterrence works. Under the previous administration, the border became a revolving door with a welcome mat. There was no meaningful enforcement, no consequence. Just a mess of legal limbo and court delays.

Unsurprisingly, illegal crossings surged. It wasn’t until the Biden administration started getting serious that the tide began to turn.

Now, people who cross illegally are being sent not to sanctuary cities, but to places like “Alligator Alcatraz.” Finally, the message is clear. This isn’t Club Med for the ‘undocumented’ anymore.

Guess what? Illegal border crossings in May 2025 dropped to 8,725 from over 130,000 the year before. That’s a 93% reduction. Furthermore, zero illegal entrants were released into the U.S. interior, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Turns out if you stop handing out welcome packs at the border and start enforcing the law, fewer people break it!

What’s equally infuriating isn’t the arrests, it’s the pantomime that followed. Political actors like Sen. Alex Padilla, District Attorney Dan Dow and County Supervisor Jimmy Paulding posturing for their bases, turning law enforcement into yet another tribal battlefield.

Meanwhile, professionally offended local media are burying legal facts beneath layers of faux outrage. Depending on editorial bias, ICE arrested an “undocumented immigrant” or a “violent suspect.”

This isn’t activism or journalism. It’s Punch and Judy politics, minus the charm.

Thankfully, most of the audience is more grown-up than the puppeteers. Rational citizens and legal immigrants are left shaking our heads, wondering when truth got traded for hashtags and performative outrage.

Are many undocumented migrants good people? Of course. Hardworking, decent, often woven into the fabric of their communities. That doesn’t entitle them to permanent residency by osmosis. Laws matter more than feelings, and kindness does not mean capitulation.

Every time we let someone stay because they’re already here, we send a clear message to the millions waiting patiently to immigrate legally: You’re the sucker. You paid the fees, followed the rules and waited your turn for nothing. Because if you’re already here, apparently that’s good enough. That’s not compassion. It’s justice outsourced to sentiment.

The real menace in San Luis Obispo isn’t ICE, it’s compassion without common sense, reinforced by a campus culture where dissenting views are treated like microaggressions and enforcement like colonialism.

When journalism becomes storytelling and politics becomes theater, we lose the one thing that holds democracy together. Trust in, and respect for, the rule of law.

Don’t like immigration law? Great, change it. Until then, enforce it. Selective outrage and hashtag histrionics aren’t justice; they’re like trying to fix immigration with a drum circle and a safe space.

Want to live in America? Get in line. Do it legally. Respect the rules. I did and I’m no saint.

The system’s flawed, but it beats the circus of emotional blackmail and student-union theatrics, where every sob story comes with a passport and “illegal” is just another lifestyle choice.

Clive Pinder. Legal immigrant, amateur anthropologist of local hysteria, armed only with a pen, a green card and a low tolerance for nonsense. https://clivepinder.substack.com