Editorial: Monitoring government a noble cause to pursue

The American Civil Liberties Union has begun training local volunteers to monitor federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity at the Yamhill County Courthouse.

As a result, some members of our community seem to have worked themselves into a lather, judging from comments posted in our online forum. One poster called the ACLU “the single greatest threat to our country”; another suggested the volunteers might be flirting with criminal obstruction of justice, and a third branded them “leftists” who should “go back home to the San Francisco Bay Area,” where they presumably belonged.

But we see no grounds to find fault with such a civic-minded pursuit. Having dedicated our lives to monitoring the workings of government, we welcome the infusion of new eyes and ears serving in a common cause.

As journalists know all too well, rot tends to take root in the dark corners any time government activity is allowed to continue unmonitored and unimpeded for a significant period of time. That’s true at all levels — local, state, national and international.

Unfortunately, the ranks of professional journalists are thinning at an alarming rate, paving the way for unscrupulous officials to line personal pockets and further secret agendas, trample fundamental rights and crush dissent, amass power of proportions threatening our democratic foundations.

The ACLU has been vilified on the right without foundation. In fact, it has defended the civil rights of militant right wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, Christian religious organizations like Jehovah’s Witnesses, gun rights bulwarks like the National Rifle Association and conservative national icons, Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North.

The ACLU is in the business of defending the constitutional rights of all Americans, regardless of creed, color or cause. That led its Massachusetts arm to argue: “In fact, the ACLU is, in many ways, our nation’s most conservative organization. Our main job is to conserve America’s original civic values as written in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

No governmental agency should be left to wield power unchecked, which most certainly includes ICE. It has established a long record of rights violations, particularly since falling under the sway of the current administration’s virulent immigration policy.

Two years ago, Thomas Balmer, then serving as chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, urged authorities to curb ICE’s penchant for turning courthouses into danger zones. He warned: “The state of Oregon needs to encourage, not discourage, court appearances by parties and witnesses, regardless of their immigration status. However, ICE’s increasingly visible practice of arresting or detaining individual in or near courthouses for possible violations of immigration laws is developing into a strong deterrent ...”

Unfortunately, his plea fell on deaf ears. The administration made it emphatically clear it did not intend to rein ICE in.

When the highest powers in the land refuse to protect fundamental rights, citizens have just cause for maintaining a peaceful and lawful watch for violations and exposing any they observe. The volunteers deserve our gratitude, not our disdain.