Brett,
We’ve crossed paths a few times in
Bush world. I moved down to Austin in April 1999 and stayed through our
landslide. Wrote a book about the 2000 campaign, The Big Enchilada: Campaign
Adventures With the Cockeyed Optimist From Texas Who Won the Biggest Prize in
Politics. It was more of a love letter to Austin than a political book, and
it’s full of people you would have worked with and known well.
When I got to Austin, my first assignment was filming Governor Bush and the president of Mexico opening a bridge between Texas and Mexico. No one probably remembers (or cares), but the very first campaign ad we aired in the Republican presidential primary campaign was a Spanish-language spot we put on Hispanic cable and radio in Iowa. We weren’t dumb enough to believe that there was some significant hidden Republican Hispanic vote to be lured to the Iowa caucuses, but we thought it was important to send a signal that Governor Bush was running for the Republican nomination the way he ran and governed in Texas, with a focus on the Hispanic community.
During my time with Governor Bush, it became clear that he had a special passion for two issues: education and connecting with the Hispanic community. You might have heard how Izzy taught him Spanish whenever they had some time together. Izzy was from the Texas-Mexico border town of Eagle Pass, and he grew up speaking Spanish at home.
In 1996, Bob Dole received 21 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2000, Bush nabbed 35 percent, and in 2004, that increased to just over 40 percent.
So, Brett, I’ve been wondering if you ever think about the fact that without Hispanic voters, you wouldn’t be on the Supreme Court? I don’t think anybody would argue with the fact that if President Bush hadn’t appointed you to the D.C. Court of Appeals, your name would never have come up for SCOTUS consideration. Had Al Gore or John Kerry won, you sure wouldn’t have been appointed to that court. Odds are you would probably be a partner in some big D.C. law firm making millions of dollars, which probably sounds appealing on some days.
I was thinking about this after your concurring opinion in the recent “shadow docket” Immigration and Customs Enforcement ruling, in which you wrote, “Apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”
ICE—and Hispanics—know what this means in the real world. No one will be told they are being stopped by ICE “only” because they are Hispanic, but being Hispanic makes you an ICE target.
That means that all the Hispanic Bush campaign aides who helped get you your Supreme Court lifetime appointment will know if they drop by Home Depot to pick up a new drill, ICE can stop and detain them, spiriting them away to an unknown location. Your opinion graciously notes, “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”
I’m sure that sounds reasonable when you are sitting in your Supreme Court offices, but did you think about what it likely means to anyone ICE grabs? How many of our old Hispanic friends from Bush world are walking around with proof of citizenship? ICE doesn’t accept real ID driver’s licenses as proof of citizenship, nor a birth certificate that hasn’t been notarized. A passport is the only proof of citizenship. How many people run errands carrying their passports? What if you don’t have a passport? At all those baseball games you love to go to, how many times did you bring a passport?
Of course, it’s not a concern for you or me because we’re white enough to make Brad Pitt look like a swarthy Mediterranean. We’re just two boring white guys who went to fancy D.C. prep schools: you to Georgetown Prep, me to Episcopal High School. (For the record, I always thought you Prep guys were a bunch of self-impressed assholes.) Unless one of those ICE dudes has a side gig delivering for Amazon, you and I will never run into them.
But think about what it must be like to get a phone call saying your wife and children or your husband or brother have been grabbed by heavily armed masked men who refuse to identify themselves and taken to an unknown location with no means of contact. Ponder that for a minute, would you, Brett? If you got a call telling you that had happened to Ashley and one of the girls. It would be one of the worst moments of your life. But you know who to call and how to go about fixing a mistake. What if you didn’t speak English, didn’t know lawyers, or didn’t have any idea what to do?
You and I probably can’t really conceive of the panic, the sense of helplessness, the terror, because we’ve always lived in a different world. Your dad was a powerful lobbyist. My dad was one of the founding partners of what is now Mississippi’s largest law firm; his dad was also a Supreme Court justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court. But even if we can’t fully grasp the sinking horror of the moment, don’t you think we should try?
There’s now an army of masked, unidentified men out there with a lot of guns, funded by a budget larger than the Marines, who wake up every day hunting for people who look just like those who made it possible for you to write your opinion approving of the hunt. I know you’re a busy guy, but maybe think about this tonight when you are at home and the homework is done and there’s some quiet time. Look at the school event schedule on the refrigerator and try to imagine what it would be like to drop off your kids, looking forward to the next game or school play, only to have masked men pull you from your car in front of them. Yes, it would all be a mistake, but would their lives ever be the same? Would yours?
In the meantime, Brett, until this madness ends, would it be OK if some of our Hispanic Bush crowd in D.C. who need to run out to Home Depot this weekend give you a call and ask if you mind picking up what they need? Or should they just run fast from their cars, holding their passports over their heads, like the images from Gestapo checkpoints?
