Yes he can, no we can’t

Historians, such as Edward Gibbon and Taylor Swift, give names to “eras.” Such as Decline and Fall and … whatever Taylor does. Our era’s name was written 60 years ago by Lee Morgan: “Yes I can, No you can’t.”A couple of news stories caught my eye this week. In Mississippi, state Attorney General Lynn Fitch would not file charges against a Senatobia police officer who shot a 1-year-old baby to death in June because police suspected the baby’s mother of shoplifting diapers.Senatobia is a town of 8,400, about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tenn.Attorney General Fitch “found the use of force was justified.”Vellesia Wiley, who was holding up her son Kohen when the cop shot him, apparently to show she was not armed, said she had not shoplifted anything, and that the woman she was with had paid for her purchases at the self-checkout.The Wileys are Black; the officer who killed the baby is white. The incident was captured on film and published by a local news outlet, Darkhorse Press.And in Wichita, Kansas, last week, police questioned but did not put in jail a woman from Garden City, Kansas, who apparently drove her Chevrolet pickup through a youth soccer game, killing a 6-year-old boy and a youth soccer coach. Also injured were five children younger than 9, and five adults. Dozens of people witnessed the deaths and injuries.Sad stories, both of whose perpetrators could be, or could have been, charged with felonies.Taking the news reports as given, is it fair to ask why people who could plausibly be accused of causing the deaths of children are allowed to walk free, but thousands of people accused of misdemeanors are thrown into prisons without a hearing?I’m talking about immigration “infractions.”Entry Without Inspection (8 U.S.C. § 1325) is a misdemeanor, and has been since 1929, when it was dreamed up. In an interesting new book, “The Shortest History of Migration” (Old Street, 2025), Ian Goldin reminds us that migration is practically synonymous with human beings. It’s how our ancestors walked out of the Great Rift Valley 100,000 years ago, into what we call Europe and Asia, then navigated to Australia and what we call Alaska, and all the way down damn near to the South Pole.Skipping 98,000 years ahead, give or take a millennium, humans had made few if any laws about “illegal border crossings.” Borders? What were they? It wasn’t until the late 19th century that nations, including the United States, tried to make rules about migration.What about the future?The replacement birth rate is a statistic that estimates how many children each woman will have to bear to maintain a country’s population. The replacement birth rate, worldwide, is 2.1 per woman.The United States’ birth rate has lingered around 1.7 to 1.8 for 50 years. That means that without another “source of supply,” if I may say it so crudely, our population will decline over time. And where is that source of supply? Immigrants.Now, in the past two years, someone — you know who — has made our country today, and in years to come, extremely hostile to immigrants. So hostile that we are arresting them with flimsy evidence, if any; beating and Tasing them; throwing them in prisons without trial; threatening and firing judges who try to treat immigrants fairly under our laws; stirring up hatred, and giving federal police officers a free hand to murder immigrants on our streets, and to murder U.S. citizens who stand up for them.So let’s sum this up: A white cop in Mississippi shoots a Black baby to death and gets away with it; a white woman kills two people on a soccer field in Kansas and goes home — facing two or more possible felonies — while tens of thousands of hard-working, honest people who feed and house us with their sweat labor, and try to raise their kids right, get arrested and deported to places that may as well be the South Pole, because they committed a misdemeanor years or decades ago, or just the other day, for the despicable crime of trying to better themselves, and care for their families.(Lee Morgan was a jazz trumpet player and composer. This is his tune, Yes I can, No You Can’t.)Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads