‘This should be alarming to everybody’: Ursula calls for due process amid ICE raids

A 5-year-old boy arriving home from preschool was taken by federal agents, along with his father, to a detention facility in Texas, The Associated Press reported Thursday. The boy was allegedly used as bait so agents could find his father.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin stated the father is in the U.S. illegally and asked for the child to stay with him, but Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said the family has an active asylum case and had not been ordered to leave the country.

In the wake of the incident, KIRO host Ursula Reutin underscored the importance of due process.

“I just invite everybody to push against your own bias — and that includes me — and I was looking at this like, OK, why would they do it this way? Is there any sort of justifiable reason? The bottom line for me will always be: everyone should be afforded due process,” Ursula said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio.

“And what is happening here is not that, and this should be alarming to everybody, regardless of who you align yourself with in terms of political party. This should be worrisome because we should all want and demand due process,” she continued.

Gee: ‘Where do we draw the line between enforcement and human dignity?’

KIRO host Gee Scott agreed with Ursula, and said people need to ask themselves — where do we draw the line?

“Where do we draw the line between enforcement and human dignity?” he said.

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press Wednesday revealed the agency allowed officers to forcibly enter homes to make arrests without a judicial warrant, which conflicts with Fourth Amendment protections.

“While the United States of America has always had its warts, issues, problems, it has always been a nation around the world that has been looked upon as, ‘Hey, that nation right there, the United States, they are trying to be better.’ And due process has been a thing that we have been afforded,” Gee said.

He posed the question: “Do you really want to live in a country without due process?”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.