Rantz: Lawmakers waste time on duplicate law after falling for fake news story

Washington legislators introduced and debated a bill to prohibit bail bond recovery agents from enforcing a civil immigration warrant — something that’s already illegal. In other words, this bill is a waste of time, essentially duplicative, and created to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Even worse, it was inspired by a fake news story.

State Senator Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma) introduced Senate Bill 5714 in response to a completely bogus story out of Sunnyside. In that incident, a man falsely claiming to be a bail bond recovery agent alleged that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was rolling out a program to deputize and pay civilians to detain illegal immigrants. That claim was nonsense, but Trudeau ran with it anyway.

Shockingly, she even got at least one Republican, State Senator Nikki Torres (R-Yakima), to back this pointless legislation.

Instead of focusing on actual issues — like the crime crisis plaguing the state — Democrats (and apparently some Republicans) wasted time on performative policymaking based on fiction.

More from Jason Rantz: Democrats may force businesses to pay illegal immigrants to go to court

How a fake news story created an unnecessary law restricting bail bond recovery agents

After the targeted arrest of two illegal immigrants in the parking lot of a Fiesta Foods store in Sunnyside, local leaders held a press conference to ensure the community they wouldn’t help ICE target criminal illegal immigrants. At the end of the press conference, a man took to the podium, while wearing a mask, to claim he worked as a “bounty hunter.”

“Tacoma called me and told me that as the waves go through, this is the first wave. The second and third is when they’re going to hire us,” said the man.

“… If we’re going to be deputized by ICE, we can pretty much do anything we want,” the man continued.

The man was apparently nothing more than a crank.

More from Jason Rantz: Why would a UW librarian promote censorship?

Embarrassing justification

Before fact-checking the incident, Trudeau was hard at work on legislation making sure so-called “bounty hunters” (or bail bond recovery agents) wouldn’t be banned from enforcing ICE warrants.

“These are really scary times and communities in this Washington should know that we will not tolerate any violations of humanity and privacy, especially in the pursuit of justice and engagement with our criminal legal systems,” Trudeau said.

She then repeated the fake news story out of Sunnyside to justify the bill.

“I had no idea that this was even happening,” she said.

Torres would then correct Trudeau and note that the man out of Sunnyside was not an actual bail bond agent. But she would also go on to derisively refer to bail bond recovery agents as “glorified bill collectors” and claim that some of them are “acting as law enforcement.”

More from Rantz: Deputies livid as anti-Trump, transgender captain given a pass for policy violation

A total waste of time

Making matters more comical? A restriction on immigration enforcement already exists.

Under Washington state law, bail bond recovery agents must have a contract through a bail bond agency. Meaning, they’d be dealing with someone already in the criminal justice system who skipped out on bail, and they’re coming to collect.

Bail bond recovery agents can’t merely arrest people, even if they’re in this country illegally. They must carry the contract with the bail bond agency during their interactions tracking down their targets.

Adding any language specific to prohibiting serving ICE warrants is performative politics. And it’s an absolute waste of time.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz