Chaos in Texas as protests disrupt legislature and reports of threats of violence between legislators over immigration.

Pancho Nevaraz (center), Democrat, was one of the people involved in the incident. Fox News/AP

After a Republican legislator called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on illegal immigrant protesters, a scuffle and threats broke out between Democrats and Republicans. Fox News. The protesters were upset about the new SB-4 law, which would make "sanctuary cities" illegal and would allow arresting officers to question immigration status. Many of the protesters held signs that indicated they were in the country illegally. Republican Matt Rinaldi called ICE and then told Democratic lawmakers that he had done so. Rinaldi claimed that Democratic representatives Pancho Nevaraz and Ramon Romero threatened him and physically assaulted him respectively. For their part, Nevaraz and Romero denied any violence and claimed that Rinaldi had threatened to kill them. Rinaldi did say that he would shoot Pancho Nevaraz in self defense but only after he threatened to "get [him] outside". 

NPR also has the story here.

A statement regarding today. pic.twitter.com/M0BcBXa43P

— Matt Rinaldi (@MattRinaldiTX) May 29, 2017

My full statement on today’s “scuffle” below. You can read more it here - https://t.co/TJSByQvfPE #txlege pic.twitter.com/y835ovp17I

— Ramon Romero Jr. (@RepRamonRomero) May 29, 2017

My Comment:
Very hard to find a unbiased source here. The Fox News and NPR ones were the best of a bad bunch. They were both biased for the right and the left respectively. Despite the obvious bias in both articles, they were still better then what most of the media was doing, which was exaggerating and lying about what happened. Most of the headlines I saw claimed that there was threats of gun violence (instead of a claim about self defense), in an issue that had nothing to do with guns.

I normally wouldn't ever cover an event that happened in a state legislature, but this event was fairly interesting. The immigration debate is getting more heated than I have ever seen it before. It's clear that tempers are very high on both sides.

So who was in the right here? I think we can all agree that both sides were in the wrong at least partially. I'll get to calling ICE on protesters in a bit, but it's fairly clear that both the Democrats and Republicans were acting like fools after that happened. It's insane to me that people were putting their hands on each other and threatening violence in a US state legislature. Even with the high level of tension over the immigration issue that kind of thing shouldn't happen.

Despite the high tensions I really don't like seeing violence over politics. It's the same thing with the "body slam" incident in Montana. Though the incident couldn't have happened to a better target, I still condemn getting rid of the non-violence standard when it comes to political disagreements. It's not that some people don't deserve to be beat up. They do. But getting rid of the non-violence standard will lead to innocent people getting hurt and not just the people that either want to fight or deserve to be hurt.

I do have to say that it's clear that both sides were probably not being honest about what was going on in the incident. I do think that there was truth what both sides were saying and lies as well. I think that Rinaldi did swear about the protesters and he did threaten to shoot Nevaraz, but only after Nevaraz threatened him, which mitigates it greatly. It's still a pretty stupid thing to say, but put into that context it's a lot more acceptable. I also think that the Democrats are obviously lying about there being no scuffle since video has shown that it did happen.

Still, the main area of disagreement seems to be the fact that Rinaldi called ICE on the protesters. In that, I find no fault in his actions. The protesters were committing a crime by disrupting a legislature and the fact that many of them admitted that they were in the country illegally means that ICE should deport them. Full stop, end of story, end of discussion. They have to go back.

Even people who want open borders tend to support the deportation of criminals. People who engage in this kind of protest, protest that disrupts the democratic process and are ignoring legal commands from law enforcement to disperse are committing a crime. They should have been arrested and investigated. Those that are here illegally and have no right to voice their opinion in a country they aren't following the laws of, deserve to be deported.

I also think that there is a huge double standard here from the left. I see the protest as a temper tantrum after the left lost the battle against the SB-4 law. They knew they lost and they decided to attack the process itself. When someone decided to call the authorities because they were breaking the law, they play the victim card yet again, despite they fact they were attacking the very system of government we all rely on. I'm just glad that someone finally decided to do the logical thing when illegal aliens are protesting.

As for the law itself, it makes obvious sense and should be adopted nationally. It's fairly obvious that federal supremacy is still a thing and cities and localities that decide they aren't going to cooperate with the federal government are breaking the law. The federal government is in charge of immigration and it's not up to local governments to defy them. If people really wanted open borders and amnesty, they should have worked harder at winning the national elections. But since the only people who want sanctuary cities are illegal immigrants, far left activists and people that want to hire illegals over American citizens, that probably won't ever happen...