‘We Have Been Down This Road Before’

Texas Lawmaker Jasmine Crockett has compared federal immigration raids under President Donald Trump to the slave patrols of the antebellum South, warning that recent Supreme Court decisions have enabled sweeping tactics that risk repeating past injustices.

Speaking to MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Crockett said that the deployment of militarized police in Democratic-led cities resembled early policing practices rooted in capturing escaped slaves:

“As somebody who understands history, when I see slave patrols, now I never lived through the slave patrol period, but if you know the history of policing in this country, Then you understand that they were born out of slave patrols and now with the Supreme Court saying this, it’s almost like you can just go grab them up”

Her Supreme Court comments refer to a recent decision which lifted restrictions on immigration raids in Los Angeles, allowing federal agents to use broad criteria such as speaking Spanish to question individuals.

Crockett said all Americans should be concerned, warning that a failure to teach and understand Black history leaves the nation vulnerable to repeating it. “We have been down this road before, and it was not good, and we fixed it once, and it is a shame that we are relitigating this and we are going to have to fix it again,” she said.

Crockett also addressed conservative focus on the murder of Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old killed by an undocumented immigrant, arguing that the conversation ignores broader data, as Black Enterprise reports. “None of us want to be unsafe. Yeah, but we’re not looking at the facts,” Crockett said. “For every immigrant that you have an example of, I’ll raise you at least two to five White supremacists, if not more.”

Crockett defended similar positions on Tuesday as she told CNN’s Kasie Hunt that political rhetoric from Trump and his allies contributes to a climate of violence and emphasized the importance of denouncing all political violence, regardless of its source. “It’s not about where it comes from. It’s about the fact that it is happening,” she stated, adding, “It is never OK. It is never OK. If it happens on the left, it is never OK if it happens on the right.”