AMERICA, or at least the United States part of it, was constructed by its European immigrant creators to enable a system of checks and balances against a background of removing an English monarchy.
Thus it has a very definite series of cut-offs and mechanics in a written constitution to keep the executive and the law apart and be able to check any moves by those who try to evade constitutional requirements.
Many 'Americans' - we use that term to loosely to describe citizens of the USA - frequently remark to me that from the president down, the executive branch, to FBI head and the departments of justice and state, all share the fact that they work for the people.
Their various oaths of office always include the 'defence of the Constitution', again visibly separating a single oath to an unelected monarch, from where today's bigger story, President Trump and his various clashes with the departments of justice and state began.
From the headlines about the more dramatic scenes unfolding within the Trump presidency we witness the House of Representatives and the Senate attempting to remind Trump of his constitutional requirements.
As to where this daily spectacular will end is up for grabs at the minute but outside the White House hothouse other fallout from Trump's 'executive orders' are beginning to be felt at the state and city level.
One of Trump's orders contains a policy to expand a federal effort to use local law enforcement as 'de facto' immigration agents.
However, it is technically within the legal right of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to pretend to be local police during immigration raids in an effort to gain entry to private residences and perform arrests.
A recent redraft of a bill by Texas Republicans Senator John Cornyn and Representative Michael McCaul seeks to punish 'sanctuary cities' such as Boston, Massachusetts.
The bill contains increasing detention space, boosting the number of immigration judges and reimbursing state governors who deploy the National Guard to patrol the US border.
With the input from the Trump administration's version of the Department of Homeland Security and immigration it also aims to boost border security and immigration enforcement in the interior of the US..
For residents of Boston, who live many miles from any land border, sanctions contained in the bill could directly affect how their city is run, and further afield how the state is run.
The bill seeks to punish sanctuary jurisdictions by dramatically expanding the pool of federal grant money that could be denied to cities and towns that prohibit or limit cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and ICE's deportation agents.
There is also a proposal that mirrors legislation from Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, that would prod sanctuary cities, like Boston, to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
How this translates onto the streets is interesting to anyone involved in policing, whether local or nationally. It has just been announced there will be an American denunciation programme, known as the 'Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement' office (VOICE).
VOICE declares that "any person who is affected by criminal activity allegedly perpetrated by criminal aliens in the US" should consider themselves, "victims of immigration crime".
The online form encourages Americans to name names and check of the violation that "best applies". The list which includes "terrorism" includes "other".
"Did you have additional businesses/individuals to report on?"
What this promotes is a possible circumvention of the due process of law. As Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University remarked, there is no reason to believe that someone is the victim of a crime (by an immigrant) just because he or she goes online and denounces a member of an officially stigmatised group.
In any country where the rule of law prevails, it is the courts that decide whether a crime has been committed.
As Europe saw in the rise of facism where people were encouraged to denounce their neighbour, in Germany, Poland, France and Italy, at times those doing the denouncing seldom realise the dangers to themselves.
Those who denounce one year, can become the denounced the following year. Lives can be destroyed. You could be next. Civil society can be destroyed and replaced.
Undocumented people, including thousands of Irish, are statistically less likely to commit crimes than US citizens, in fact they are more likely to be victims of crimes than US citizens.
This is the hub of where a society can go. Good policing whether in Belfast or Boston relies on the support of the people.
Recently the mayor of Boston Marty Walsh and the Boston police departments head, Bill Evans, have pointed to the attempts to reach out to the people of the various districts of the city, especially East Boston where many immigrants live.
Trust by citizens and policing is a two way process and with the push by lawmakers, encourged by the Trump White House, even amid all its problems, is a long term project.
But as we see when trust disappears on the streets of Belfast or Boston policing suffers, crimes rise and consequently the solving of those crimes decrease.
Both have stated that they do not want to see Boston, state or local police embroiled in the move by ICE agents to act as their surrogate agents during routine traffic stops or other daily functions any police carry out the world over.
Mayor Walsh has vowed to protect undocumented immigrants while Police Commissioner Evans reported 'zero cases' turned over to ICE in 2016.
Political policing didn't work in Belfast, it won't work in Boston. Neighbourhood policing by targeting those 'denounced' online is not the way to tackle any crime, whether that's by an undocumented immigrant of whatever race and country or any other of the many daily 'crimes' that are dealt with by the rule of law. Everyone should be treated the same.
Anyone who has been the victim of a crime should call the police, not some partisan bureaucrat in Washington DC.
:: MJ Conlon is a Belfast-based writer currently visiting Boston, a city with which he has a 30-year association
