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The Attorney General Visits Las Cruces. Why?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R)

 

  Commentary: I’m not sure why U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Las Cruces on Wednesday, or what he believes he accomplished with his visit.

The original agenda for the convention of border sheriffs taking place at the Ramada Hotel and Conference Center called for Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney General Steve Cook to speak in the afternoon time slot. Cook called days before the convention to let them know that Sessions would be coming in his place.

That led to media speculation that the AG might have something important to announce. Reporters and photographers from national media outlets throughout the country came, all hoping that Sessions would say something newsworthy. Perhaps even in response to the derisive presidential tweet days before once again lamenting his decision to recuse himself from the Muller investigation.

He did not.

I listened to the speech to see if Sessions would use the same kind of inflammatory rhetoric he had during a speech in El Paso last year, when he referred to the border region in military terms normally reserved for describing foreign battlegrounds. He did not.

In fact, it seemed to me that Session had read or heard the blowback from his El Paso speech. This time, when he got to the point in his prepared remarks where he was to talk about MS-13 gang members coming over the border, he prefaced it by conceding, “you may not have many of them here.”

The speech went for about 30 minutes, and then Sessions was whisked away for the flight out of town.

There was a lot of talk about catch-and-release. As an angler, I’m familiar with the term. When you catch a fish, there are two choices. You can remove the hook and gently let the fish go. Or you can take a knife and split the fish open from tail to gills, remove its guns and then cook it with a little butter and lemon juice. Sessions made it clear that he’s very much against release.

He’s very much against a lot of things: communities making local decision as to how to expend law enforcement resources; immigration advocates who attempt to stand against the deportation of those who have lived in our community for decades; and those of us who see a border wall as both wasteful and offensive.

He lumped immigrants into two classes. The bad ones were gang members and criminals. The good ones were taking jobs away from deserving American workers. He suggested that elected officials in sanctuary cities want to protect drug dealers and are responsible for the opioid epidemic. And, he said that business owners who have come to rely on foreign workers are a bunch of whiners.

But, we already knew that’s what he believes.

There wasn’t much in his speech that we didn’t already know. There was nothing about what the government intends to do with DREAMers, should the courts eventually rule in favor of the administration. And, I’m sure much to the disappointment of the national media, there was nothing about the president’s latest attack tweet … only more praise for the attacker.

If you Google “Sessions Las Cruces speech,” you get only the local stories. With no news to report, the national guys didn’t even file a story.

And so, once again, what was accomplished? Did he come all this way just for a friendly audience? What did he tell us that Steve Cook couldn’t have?