It’s happening in Nebraska. It’s happened on a cruise ship. And of course in Minnesota. To off-duty police officers. To Native Americans. Americans are being stripped of their freedoms by the Trump Administration, under the cloak of an immigration enforcement action. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has gone so far to say that citizens should be prepared to prove their citizenship to ICE and Border Patrol officers. But this is not Nazi Germany and American citizens are not required to carry citizenship papers within the United States. (In fact, only half of Americans have a passport to document citizenship and RealID doesn’t prove citizenship, only residence). Interrogation. Detention. No access to legal counsel. Denial of rights to free speech and assembly. Even denial of rights to legally carry a firearm.

Even with all of this, the Republican representatives and conservative voices who ordinarily defend the Constitution have been eerily silent. Their constituents are being pulled from their beds, their cars, their workplaces – often assaulted with personal property damage left in the wake of the ICE actions. But they can’t open their mouths to defend the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendment rights. They have gone mute. A recent town hall held by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R., Wyoming) in the reddest part of her red state, turned into a vocal rebuke of her silence on the matter of the immigration enforcement actions. When confronted, she still didn’t wish to discuss the matter and ended her town hall. (Hageman has declared her candidacy for the Senate, because she clearly is showing remarkable leadership!).

Corporations have been equally silent in defending their employees and users of their products. One would imagine that the leader of the largest smartphone company in America (Apple) might come out to defend the rights of its users to utilize their iPhones to record actions happening on their streets. In contrast to Tim Cook’s silence, he showed up the evening of Alex Pretti’s murder to celebrate Melania Trump’s documentary with Donald Trump and the gang. The large companies in Minnesota have been largely silent as their employees feel targeted for the color of their skin (as tacitly permitted in Kavanaugh stops). Their recent call for de-escalation has fallen well short of support for their employees who are legally permitted to work for them. And criticism of the brutal ICE behavior is entirely absent.

And then there are the gun rights organizations. They are quick to blame and point fingers when those who identify as ‘conservative’ are the subject of police actions when carrying a gun (think Kyle Rittenhouse, who illegally carried a gun and used it to kill men in Wisconsin – out of his own fear), but are slow to defend Alex Pretti who carried a gun legally in Minnesota and was killed by federal ICE agents on the pretense that his holstered gun was a threat. I don’t see the NRA coming to the defense of the Pretti family, coming forward with a Go-Fund-Me for his family, or casting aspersions at the officers who shot him 10 times. Some Second Amendment rights orgs seem to disagree with their take. And the unearthed Charlie Kirk (Turning Point USA founder, recently murdered) quote about the need for guns against a tyrannical police force used against its citizens has been an inconvenient reminder of their previously held positions. Please note: in the wake of the ICE murders, Turning Point USA has not said a word in defense of Mr. Pretti’s right to bear arms.

When so-called conservatives grow mute when a government of their own acts counter to their supposedly strongly held beliefs, then one must begin to question whether those beliefs were strongly held at all. Perhaps that defense of the Constitution that they so proudly carried in their pockets through the halls of Congress is contingent on whether they are in power. Perhaps that Constitutional adherence was a pretense for getting into power and dismantling the checks and balances of our democracy and rigging the system to favor some over others.

And the national disgrace continues…