Over the weekend of July 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeted more than 2,000 aliens illegally in the United States for arrest and deportation. According to government figures obtained by the New York Times, only 35 were detained. Of course, President Trump had been saying for weeks that the raids were coming, and the lack of surprise may have had something to do with the lack of results. In an interview with the Times, Acting Director of ICE Matthew Albence complained, “I don’t know of any other population where people are telling them how to avoid arrest as the result of illegal activity.”

Someone should tell this man about the Underground Railroad. In 1851, after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a Boston abolitionist organization put up posters warning the “Colored People of Boston, One and All” that the police had been authorized to act as “kidnappers and slave catchers” and urging them to avoid the police and “Have Top Eye Open.” Those “Know Your Rights” posters now being circulated in immigrant communities are in a fine old American tradition.