(Seattle Times):

In the Spokane case, the arrests of Alvarez Perez and his friend were the opposite of what someone concerned about the rule of law would want to see. It sent a powerful signal that rules are for dupes — that the system is there not to reward merit or civic-mindedness, but to ensnare you.

“The basic framework of Trump’s interior enforcement is that it is whimsical and arbitrary,” writes David Bier, director of immigration studies for the conservative Cato Institute. “Under President Biden, no one knew why people were getting into the country. Now no one knows why people are getting thrown out.” Just those two detentions on one day in Spokane so inflamed parts of the town that 30 people got arrested.

Stuckart, the former City Council president, said he got out of jail at 1:30 a.m. Thursday and now is at home, feeling utterly confounded. Several times in our interview he choked up out of frustration. Was his legal ward, Alvarez Perez, hustled away in part to incite controversy? Or was he just the collateral damage of a blundering attempt at hitting political deportation goals?

Both the Spokane mayor, Lisa Brown, and the state attorney general, Nick Brown, had cautioned Stuckart about his civil disobedience of sitting in front of the ICE van, he says. They worried he was poking the bear, giving the belligerent Trump reason to call out Washington state’s National Guard.

“But what are you supposed to do?” he cried. “Are you supposed to sit there and let it happen? Just let the ICE van sweep away people who have done nothing wrong? Or if you object, they’re going to call in the military?

what happened in Spokane this past week — the detentions and the backlash, the cruelty and the chaos, all of it — was the point.