OPINION: Extreme, far-left wish list? Hardly

As the limited federal government shutdown enters its second week, it’s good to focus on the Democratic demands that the Republicans are resisting so adamantly.

In the wake of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s huge paramilitary surge in the streets of Minneapolis and nationwide protests against images of masked federal agents breaking down doors, snatching young children and killing citizen protestors, the Democrats made modest requests. They reflect basic rights enshrined in the Constitution. They ask: 

• That ICE agents obtain warrants from judges to enter and make arrests in homes.

•  That they show visible identification, remove face coverings and use body cameras like many other law enforcement officers.

•  That they end roving, random patrols and that they allow independent investigations to include state and local authorities.

According to U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, of Wyoming, these demands are “radical and extreme — a left-wing wish list.”

Really? Tell that to the American patriots who gave their lives on the battlefields of Lexington and Concord, Ticonderoga or Brandywine. Those Americans were sick of the British quartering troops in their houses without their consent, bashing down doors, imprisoning colonists without due process. Their leaders, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were steeped in British history dating back to the Magna Carta. They knew that the British had fought a civil war — even beheaded a king — in the 1600s to guarantee basic rights for their citizens.

Drawing upon this history, Madison and other Founding Fathers wrote these rights into a Bill of Rights, amendments to the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment, for example, guarantees the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. Together with other amendments these rights undergird “the rule of law,” which restricts the arbitrary and naked power of the executive to invade private property without a warrant, and provides due process, including the right to habeus corpus, which requires that the government justify apprehension and detention, rather than just “disappearing” those they do not like.

Along with the freedom to assemble, speak and practice one’s own religion these generally accepted norms have been what distinguish our country from those ruled by dictators and kings.

But now the Republicans in Congress are balking. They are defending masked intruders, searches conducted without a court order — even immunity for ICE from prosecution and independent investigation. They are, in effect, asking us to side with the British and the power of the king, not the people.

Fortunately, the public is beginning to see who the real radicals are here. And unless they return to their senses, enact some necessary reforms, they may face the consequences that the British faced in 1783 in November 2026.

Dede Feldman is a former Democratic state senator from Albuquerque's North Valley.