During Wednesday’s meeting of the Legislative Courts, Corrections, and Justice Committee (CCJ), state Rep. John Block (R-Alamogordo), founder and editor of the Piñon Post, condemned Democrats’ increasingly radical rhetoric, warning it is fueling violence against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. His comments came the same day a gunman in Dallas opened fire at an ICE facility with bullets inscribed “anti-ICE,” killing two migrants.
Block’s remarks followed CCJ Chairman Sen. Joseph Cervantes’ (D-Las Cruces) shocking comparison of ICE agents to the Ku Klux Klan. On Tuesday, Cervantes claimed: “When children are being put on planes and people are being taken in the night and people are raiding mobile home parks and they are doing it with masks and, you know, something we haven’t seen since the KKK days, right?”
By Wednesday, Cervantes attempted to soften his words, insisting he meant only to equate the act of ICE agents wearing masks with the Klan. Yet his clarification still drew outrage, since agents are forced to conceal their identities precisely because of leftist harassment, doxxing, and threats targeting them and their families.
Block pushed back forcefully. “We need to protect the people who are protecting us — the ICE agents who are doing their jobs — and I also think it is the prerogative of the chair, the vice-chair, and every member of this committee to tone down the rhetoric because it’s resulting… in people being hurt, people being doxxed, people being killed, harassed, and yes, assassinated.”
He added pointedly, “Maybe don’t correlate ICE agents to the KKK. Maybe don’t talk about these people who go every single day, put the badge on every single day to protect our country, maybe don’t talk about them as enemies.”
Block underscored the absurdity of the comparison: “The KKK was the first domestic terror organization in this country, targeting Black people, lynching people. I don’t see ICE agents doing that. They’re not. They’re doing their job to protect this country. And people who came to this country illegally did not do it correctly. They are being processed humanely and swiftly back to their home destinations.”
He concluded with a direct challenge to the committee: “It is the prerogative of this committee to stop the political rhetoric, to stop with the performative outrage. It starts right here, right now.”
Despite the call for civility, Democrats escalated the rhetoric. Rep. Eleanor Chávez (D-Albuquerque) dismissed the appeal outright: “Try to tone that down? I don’t think so.” She went further, declaring, “I’m gonna call it what it is. It’s fascism, and ICE is acting like the KKK. And we’ve got to stop our local police, our state police, we’ve got to stop those state employees who are collaborating with ICE. We’ve got to stop them.”
Following Chavez’s inflammatory comments, state Sen. Crystal Brantley (R-Elephant Butte) wrote via X, “NM Democrat just hours after a left wing psychopath attacks ICE office in TX, killing 3 detainees. Gasoline on fire.”
Chávez is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and visited the University of New Mexico student “encampment” supporting “Palestine.”
The phrase “ICE = KKK” was tagged on the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters this March when it was firebombed by a radicalized leftist, Jamison Wagner, who is charged with the politically motivated arson.
The exchange revealed a stark partisan divide: while Democrats equated federal law enforcement officers with America’s most notorious hate group, Republicans insisted that reckless rhetoric has real-world consequences — including violence against those tasked with enforcing the nation’s laws.
Chavez is proof the DNC has turned into rouge dimwitted polluted corrupted organization.
Republicans are for law and order, Democrats are on the side of criminals.