Unlawful border crossings dropped to four-year low in November

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-31/year-end-border-crossings-lowest-seen-in-biden-administration

Unlawful border crossings dropped to four-year low in November, new data show

By Salvador Hernandez

 and Ruben Vives

Dec. 31, 2024 11:36 AM PT

 

Unlawful border crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped to a four-year low, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with 46,610 people stopped between ports of entry in November.

The number of illegal crossings that month marked an 18% decrease from the previous month, and the lowest level since July 2020, the agency said.

“Our enhanced enforcement efforts, combined with executive actions and coordination with Mexico and Central American countries in recent months, are having a sustained, meaningful impact,” said Troy A. Miller, the acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Between June and November, the Department of Homeland Security removed more than 240,000 people, according to the agency. In fiscal year 2024, the department also removed more than 700,000 from the country, more than any prior year since 2010.

The numbers represent something of a turnaround for the Biden administration, which faced major political backlash for a surge in illegal crossings earlier in Biden’s term. Trump slammed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the increases.

Immigration experts attribute the drop in border encounters — people stopped trying to cross in areas between ports of entry — to multiple factors, including what they said is the current administration’s “carrot-and-stick” approach.

Under the Biden administration, officials have encouraged migrants to turn themselves in at ports of entry, launching an app to make appointments as they travel through Mexico. It has also discouraged illegal entries between ports of entry, by making those who attempt to enter the country in that manner ineligible for asylum. 

The sharp decrease comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to be sworn in, bringing with him an administration that has made cracking down undocumented immigration a top priority. During his campaign, Trump and his top advisors characterized the southern border as out of control and under “invasion,” and promised mass deportations.

In a Time interview, Trump vowed to mobilize the military to help deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

“We have people coming in at levels and at record numbers that we’ve never seen before,” Trump said. “I’ll do what the law allows. And I think in many cases, the sheriffs and law enforcement is going to need help. We’ll also get National Guard. We’ll get National Guard, and we’ll go as far as I’m allowed to go.”

The recent border crossings figures paint a somewhat different picture, however.

Border Patrol agents on the ground have reported a drop in the number of crossings for the last seven months, according to the agency, with a 60% decrease occurring between May and November.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have also touted that the number of people processed for removal has doubled in recent months.

The CBP One app allows migrants traveling through Mexico to make appointments at ports of entry, discouraging them from trying to enter the country through deserts in between to avoid U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents, said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute.

The administration also issued an order making those who make illegal crossings ineligible for asylum, and encouraged the governments of Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica to increase migration controls in their counties.

“November marked the first time ever that a majority of encounters were migrants arriving at a port of entry rather than being intercepted after crossing the border without authorization — proof that this carrot-and-stick approach was taking effect,” Mittelstadt said.

Despite the decrease in border encounters, the incoming Trump administration has continued to promise an aggressive approach to deportations, and some have threatened sanctuary cities and states with consequences if they stand in the way. 

Tom Homan, acting director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration and “border czar” appointee for the second, has called for increased workplace raids.

He told Fox News that cities that refuse to help federal immigration agencies could face criminal charges.

“If you knowingly conceal or harbor an illegal alien from a police officer, it is a felony,” he said.

Marisa Cianciarulo, dean of Irvine’s Western State College of Law and an expert on immigration and refugee law, said recollections of family separations and detentions during the first Trump administration, as well as recent threats of mass deportations, could also be playing a temporary role in discouraging migrants.

“I think we’re seeing a kind of preemptive response to the new administration,” she said. “There’s fear and anxiety, and they’re going to look for other means to support their families.”

Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, also sent out letters to a number of California officials, cities and counties, warning them of possible consequences if they interfered with immigration enforcement. 

In September, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) and other members of the House Judiciary Committee held a field hearing in San Diego County on the border crisis, inviting mayors of Santee and Vista, law enforcement officials and residents to provide testimony.

In his opening statement, Issa, whose district includes large portions of San Diego County, said that while there are people who legitimately seek asylum and have worked toward entering the country legally, there are millions who have entered the country illegally.

“It is our goal to restore the rule of law and recognize that we can have legal immigration in our country but only if we can control the border, “ he said.

Issa could not immediately be reached for comment.

At the hearing, Santee Mayor John Minto said that the Biden-Harris administration’s approach to border security and immigration was affecting not only the state but San Diego County, which was at the forefront of the issue. He said that between September 2023 and May 2024, San Diego County received up to 154,000 street releases of migrants, many of whom were placed in trolleys and sent to the eastern region of the county.

“These unofficial figures underscore the unprecedented and grave scale of the region’s border crisis,” he said. “The influx of migrants has drained local resources, including overcrowding at local hospitals, prompting San Diego County officials to respond with a coordinated effort involving federal, state and regional support.”

Minto could not immediately be reached for comment.

Earlier this month, San Diego County passed a new policy that would prevent jail officials from cooperating with immigration officials in any way.

The policy went beyond the state’s current law, which allows local jurisdictions to notify immigration officials when someone convicted of certain violent or sexual felonies is set to be released from jail. Under the new policy, San Diego would not provide release dates to federal officials.

The policy has triggered a standoff between county supervisors and the San Diego County Sheriff, who said she would continue to cooperate with federal immigration officials as state law allowed.

California officials anticipate conflict with the new administration. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has called the letters from Miller’s America First Legal a “scare tactic.” Bonta said the state is preparing for legal challenges.

But Cianciarulo warns that punitive policies on migrants tend to have only temporary impacts. If economic and political factors push people out of their home countries, and they’re lured by the prospect of work in the U.S., migrants will eventually take the risk.

“Regardless of how strict the laws are, how punitive, we still come back to the fact that immigration is an economic reality,” Cianciarulo said. “[Migration] is not an emotional type of decision.”

 

Carter’s Panama Canal Treaties Symbolize How Much Washington Has Changed [nyt]

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/us/politics/carter-panama-canal.html

 

Carter’s Panama Canal Treaties Symbolize How Much Washington Has Changed

To return the canal to Panama, President Jimmy Carter worked to change minds and build a bipartisan coalition that put aside short-term political considerations.

 

By Peter Baker

Reporting from Washington

Published Jan. 2, 2025Updated Jan. 7, 2025

Leer en español

When President Jimmy Carter traveled to Panama in June 1978 to finalize hotly disputed treaties turning over the Panama Canal, he declared that “we stand on the threshold of a new era.”

More than 46 years later, that era may be over, if President-elect Donald J. Trump has his way.

Mr. Carter always considered the twin treaties to be signature achievements that would figure prominently in his obituary. Indeed, for all the fireworks they generated at the time, the canal treaties have been broadly accepted ever since as a settled matter and the bedrock of the U.S. relationship with Latin America.

Yet paradoxically, just days before Mr. Carter’s death at age 100 on Sunday, Mr. Trump seemingly out of the blue propelled the nearly half-century-old issue back onto the national agenda, complaining about shipping fees and Chinese influence. If Panama does not make changes, he said, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question.”

Mr. Trump did not say how he would force such an outcome, and some analysts were skeptical that it amounted to more than a blustery bargaining position. But the timing of his threat focused new attention on an old issue, recalling an episode in Mr. Carter’s presidency that many Americans today may not remember or know much about.

“Through a bizarre accident of timing, we now have one president fantasizing about taking back the canal at just the time the world recognizes the canal transfer as an important part of a late president’s legacy,” said James Fallows, who was Mr. Carter’s speechwriter at the time and accompanied the president on that 1978 trip to Panama.

The story of Mr. Carter’s successful efforts to turn the canal over to Panama was one of the defining moments of his tenure and amounts to a case study in how much Washington has changed since then. Despite ferocious opposition on the political right led by a former California governor named Ronald Reagan, Mr. Carter managed what seems impossible to imagine today — a relentless drive that actually changed minds and built bipartisan support to do something with little political payoff and plenty of political risk.

By most accounts, the turnover of the canal improved U.S. relations in Latin America and stabilized the situation for U.S. shipping to avoid what many feared would be upheaval and even violence. The turnover was seen by opponents as a blow to American pride and national interests since, after all, the United States had built the canal. But even Mr. Reagan came to accept the treaties and never tried to upend them once he became president.

The issue was inherited by Mr. Carter, who by his own acknowledgment knew little about it when he first ran for president in 1976. The original Panama Canal treaty was signed in 1903. In one of the great engineering feats of modern history, the United States built the canal between 1904 and 1914, and operated it thereafter.

But over time, it became an issue of national pride for Panama, and mass riots in 1964 killed four American soldiers and 20 Panamanians. Panama’s government cut off diplomatic relations with the United States until President Lyndon B. Johnson agreed to negotiate a new treaty ceding sovereignty.

That effort broke down in 1968 when Lt. Col. Omar Torrijos Herrera seized power in Panama in a military coup. President Richard M. Nixon eventually reopened negotiations in 1970 and President Gerald R. Ford continued them when he took over.

But Mr. Reagan, challenging Mr. Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976, made control of the canal a powerful attack line. “We bought it, we paid for it, we built it and we intend to keep it,” Mr. Reagan memorably declared.

Mr. Ford won the nomination but lost the general election to Mr. Carter. During the transition, Mr. Ford told his successor that the canal was a more pressing issue than Middle East peace or arms talks with the Soviet Union. To educate himself, Mr. Carter read “The Path Between the Seas,” David McCullough’s award-winning account of the building of the canal.

The new president came to see it as an issue of justice. “It’s obvious that we cheated the Panamanians out of their canal,” he wrote in his diary. In his memoir, he called tension over the canal a “diplomatic cancer.”

But it was also a matter of security. Military officials told Mr. Carter at the time that it would require up to 100,000 American troops to defend the canal against an uprising.

To overcome concerns about losing control, Mr. Carter negotiated two treaties with Panama. In addition to the main agreement outlining joint operation of the canal until its turnover by 2000, the second treaty stipulated that the canal would be neutral, with U.S. shipping guaranteed access, and that the United States would be permitted to use armed force to keep it open.

Mr. Carter invited leaders from across Latin America to a celebratory signing ceremony on Sept. 7, 1977, meant to highlight American respect for its neighbors. General Torrijos was so overcome by emotion that he broke down and sobbed in a private room with Mr. Carter before the ceremony.

But ratification in the Senate “seemed impossible,” as Mr. Carter recalled in his memoir, “Keeping Faith.” A Gallup poll showed that only 39 percent of Americans supported the treaties while 46 percent opposed them.

Mr. Carter was undaunted. A stubborn man who saw political expediency as a cardinal sin, he made ratification his top priority, working night and day to convince the public and the Senate. He teamed up with Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, the Republican leader, while lobbying conservatives like Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona and enlisting the aid of prominent Republicans like Mr. Ford and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

He got help from influential conservative voices like William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, and even the iconic cowboy actor John Wayne, a strong Reagan ally. Mr. Wayne, whose first wife was Panamanian, even wrote a letter to his friend Mr. Reagan chastising him for “misinforming people.”

Mr. Carter was so personally invested that he kept a notebook on his desk with a section for each senator to record the latest information on their position. “It’s hard to concentrate on anything except Panama,” he told his diary.

His efforts shifted public sentiments, with polls now showing more support than opposition. But just two days before the first vote, he nearly despaired. “This has been one of the worst days, knowing that we were lost, then gaining a little hope,” he recorded in the diary.

On March 16, 1978, after 22 days of debate, the Senate voted on the second treaty first, on the assumption that it would be easier to support the agreement guaranteeing American rights to defend the canal. Mr. Carter listened in his private office, checking each senator’s vote on a tally sheet. “I had never been more tense in my life,” he wrote in his memoir. The treaty was approved 68 to 32, winning one vote more than necessary.

It was a major victory, but Mr. Carter still needed to push through the other, more disputed treaty. A key vote belonged to Senator S.I. Hayakawa, Republican of California.

A colorful character, Mr. Hayakawa gave Mr. Carter a copy of a book on semantics that he had written. Mr. Carter, ever the dutiful student, read it that night, then called the senator the next day and demonstrated enough knowledge to prove that he really had.

That still was not enough, so finally, playing to senatorial vanity, Mr. Baker arranged to call Mr. Carter with Mr. Hayakawa listening to ask if the president needed to meet occasionally with the California senator to get his advice on foreign affairs. “I gulped, thought for a few seconds, and replied, ‘Yes, I really do!’ hoping God would forgive me,” Mr. Carter later wrote.

Jonathan Alter, author of “His Very Best,” a 2020 biography of Mr. Carter, wrote that Mr. Hayakawa wanted Mr. Carter to commit to meeting every two weeks. “Sam, I couldn’t possibly limit our visits to every two weeks,” Mr. Carter replied cleverly. “I might want to hear your advice more often!” Mr. Hayakawa signed onto the treaty and, as Mr. Alter wrote, “that was the last time S.I. Hayakawa ever spoke to Jimmy Carter.”

The Senate approved the other treaty by the same 68 to 32 vote on April 18, 1978. Mr. Fallows, who just returned from a trip to the Panama Canal last month, called it “one of Jimmy Carter’s most important, if least remembered, diplomatic and legislative achievements.”

It came at a cost. Seven senators who voted for the treaties lost re-election just months later. But Mr. Reagan came to believe the treaties were worth keeping and thus ensured their survival, at least until now.

“Once he became president, he never revisited the issue and actually benefited policy-wise from Carter’s political courage in returning the canal to Panama,” said William Inboden, author of “The Peacemaker,” about Mr. Reagan’s foreign policy. “I think it is one of Carter’s most consequential Latin America foreign policy legacies.”

Still, Mr. Inboden, director of the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida, said that “while Trump’s musing about the U.S. retaking the canal is crass and unrealistic, it still highlights a serious concern about China’s growing influence in the region.”

But Mr. Alter said that Mr. Carter’s move had secured American interests. “That basic calculus has not changed,” he said on Thursday. “After all these years of Panama successfully running the canal, there’s no question that Trump breaking the treaties would lead to extensive violence, even war, there and a critical artery of global commerce would be at least temporarily shut.”

A correction was made on 

Jan. 7, 2025

: 

An earlier version of this article misstated the rank of Omar Torrijos Herrera when he seized power in Panama in 1968 in a military coup. He was a lieutenant colonel at the time, not a brigadier general.

---

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 4, 2025, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Carter’s Panama Canal Treaties Illustrate How Washington Has Changed. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Antony Blinken - The Interview [nyt]

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/magazine/antony-blinken-interview.htm

 By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

• Jan. 4, 2025

Four years ago, after the tumultuous first Trump administration, President Biden came into office promising to rebuild old alliances and defend democracy. The man tasked with doing that on the world stage was Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a longtime diplomat who had worked with Biden for two decades. The message to America’s allies and enemies alike was that a new era of stability was at hand.

Instead, Blinken was beset by an escalating series of international crises almost from the beginning. The self-imposed wounds of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal were quickly followed by the generational challenge of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Hamas’s savage attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent scorched-earth war in Gaza plunged the region into crisis and destabilized the political climate in America.

All the while, Blinken continued to champion Biden’s original vision of robust American diplomacy to solve the world’s many problems. But the United States got involved in other ways, sending billions of dollars and weapons to both Israel and Ukraine, which caused political fallout at home. Now, as the Biden administration winds down, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East rage on. A new Trump administration is set to retreat from those very alliances and institutions that Blinken sought to reinforce. And that whiplash in America’s foreign policy has left an open question over its leadership in the changing world order.

On Jan. 2, I sat down with Blinken at the State Department for a wide ranging conversation about the world he is leaving behind, which, despite it all, he argues is better than the world of four years ago.

Four years ago, you inherited the world from President Trump. And now you’re about to hand it back to him. Your tenure has been an unprecedented interregnum. Have you thought about what a strange position that is to be in? 

Well, I think a lot about the two sides of this coin that you just alluded to. In terms of what we’ve inherited: It’s so easy to lose sight because people are focused, understandably, on the present and on the future, not on the past. But if you just look back four years, when we took office, we inherited arguably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We inherited the worst public-health crisis in at least 100 years. We had a country that was divided, and we had fraught relationships with allies and partners around the world and a perception from our adversaries — whether it was Russia, whether it was China, other countries — that the United States was in inexorable decline. Today as I sit with you, I think we hand over an America in a much, much stronger position, having come through the economic crisis, having come through the health crisis and having changed much for the better our position around the world because we made those investments in alliances and partnerships.

When you first came into office, President Biden painted a portrait of a world that was seeing a battle between democracy and autocracy, a phrase that was repeatedly used. Yet at home, voters have been skeptical of that fight. Many voters bought into President-elect Trump’s vision of an America that should be less involved in the world. Why don’t you think that the Biden administration, and you in particular, were able to convince voters of the benefit of what you have been endeavoring to do these past few years? 

I’m not sure that I agree with the premise of the question. From what I see, from what I read, from the analysis that I see, most Americans want us to be engaged in the world. They want to make sure that we stay out of wars, that we avoid conflict, which is exactly what we’ve done. But they want to see the United States engaged.

So you don’t believe that the election was a repudiation of the vision of President Biden and your vision? Because President-elect Trump has a very different idea of how to engage in the world. 

One of the things in this job that I’ve appreciated is I don’t do politics, I do policy. So the real question is what are the policies that can make a difference in the lives of Americans, can make them a little bit safer, a little bit more full of opportunity, a little bit healthier. That’s what we’re really focused on. In terms of the analysis of the election, really not my place to do it.

I’m not asking you to do politics. I’m just asking for a little reflection on — this is something you’ve given your life to. Obviously, the results were a disappointment. And so I wonder if that doesn’t cause you to pause and reflect, that perhaps the animating vision that you have had might not have been what Americans wanted. I mean, do you think there’s just a changing sense in this country of our place in the world and what we owe our allies?

Again, I’m not at all sure that the election turned on any one or even a collection of foreign-policy issues. Most elections don’t. But leaving that aside: Americans don’t want us in conflict. They don’t want us in war. We went through 20 years where we had hundreds of thousands of Americans deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. People were tired of that, understandably. Well, when President Biden was vice president, he presided over the end of our engagement in Iraq. As president, he ended the longest war in our history, Afghanistan. The investments that we’ve made in our NATO alliance — maybe we haven’t done a good-enough job explaining it, and if that’s the case, that’s on me. But one of the things that we try to explain to Americans, the reason so many of the institutions, including NATO, came into being in the first place was to try to make sure that we never had another global conflagration after World War II. And the strength of an alliance like NATO is in the basic bargain that countries make in joining it, and that is: an attack on one is an attack on all. That is the single-most-powerful way to prevent conflict in the first place, to deter aggression.

I want to pick up on something that you said there, which is discussing Afghanistan, because this takes us back to the beginning of your tenure. I think it is reasonable to argue that Americans’ skepticism of the Biden administration’s handling on foreign policy really began with the catastrophic way we got out of Afghanistan. There was consensus that we should absolutely end that war, but the manner in which it was done was very detrimental. When President Biden first took office, there was this promise that you and everyone else that was being brought on board were the adults in the room that were going to end the chaos of the Trump administration. How did that early failure in Afghanistan change the sense that President Biden really had this under control, that you had it under control? Did it damage America’s credibility? 

First, I make no apologies for ending America’s longest war. This, I think, is a signal achievement of the president’s. The fact that we will not have another generation of Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan, that’s an important achievement in and of itself. It’s also actually strengthened our position around the world. And I see that every single day. Our adversaries would like nothing more than for us to have remained bogged down in Afghanistan for another decade.

But you left a country in the control of the Taliban, where the stated dream of spreading democracy has been completely upended. Women have borne the brunt of that. There are restrictions on their movements, restrictions on even their voices, what jobs they can take. In every possible way, the manner in which this was done and the state in which Afghanistan has been left could not have been what the United States desired. 

There was never going to be an easy way to extricate ourselves from 20 years of war. I think the question was what we were going to do moving forward from the withdrawal. We also had to learn lessons from Afghanistan itself. Here at the State Department, one of the things that I ordered almost immediately was an after-action review to try to make sure that we understood what did we get right and also what did we get wrong in the withdrawal itself. I brought back senior diplomats to do that. We produced a lengthy report with recommendations. We followed through on most of them to make sure that we’re in a better position to deal with a crisis, to deal with an evacuation like in Afghanistan. And we are. And in fact, we’ve actually put into practice many of those recommendations in subsequent crises that we had to face, whether it was in Lebanon, whether it was in Israel, whether it was in Sudan, all of that we brought to bear based on the lessons that we’ve learned from Afghanistan.

Six months after Afghanistan, Russia invaded Ukraine. That was February 2022. I remember that moment as being terrifying. How close were we to direct conflict? 

Look, there’ve been different moments where we had real concerns about actions that Russia might take, including even potentially the use of nuclear weapons. That very much focused the mind. But I think throughout we’ve been able to navigate this in a way that has kept us away from direct conflict with Russia. Now Russia is engaged in all sorts of nefarious activities, so-called hybrid attacks of one kind or another, whether it’s in cyberspace, whether it’s acts of sabotage, assassination. Those things are happening. They’re happening in Europe. And this is something that we’re working very closely on with many of our partners. But in terms of direct conflict, I don’t think we’ve been close, but it’s something that we’ve had to be very, very mindful of.

You made two early strategic decisions on Ukraine. The first, because of that fear of direct conflict, was to restrict Ukraine’s use of American weapons within Russia. The second was to support Ukraine’s military offensive without a parallel diplomatic track to try and end the conflict. How do you look back on those decisions now? 

So first, if you look at the trajectory of the conflict, because we saw it coming, we were able to make sure that not only were we prepared and allies and partners were prepared, but that Ukraine was prepared. We made sure that well before the Russian aggression happened, starting in September and then again December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine to make sure that they had in hand what they needed to defend themselves, things like Stingers, Javelins that were instrumental in preventing Russia from taking Kyiv, from rolling over the country, erasing it from the map, and indeed pushing the Russians back. But I think what’s so important to understand is at different points in time, people get focused on one weapon system or another. Is it an Abrams tank? Is it an F-16? What we’ve had to look at each and every time is not only should we give this to the Ukrainians but do they know how to use it? Can they maintain it? Is it part of a coherent plan? All of those things factored into the decisions we made on what to give them and when to give it.

In terms of diplomacy: We’ve exerted extraordinary diplomacy in bringing and keeping together more than 50 countries, not only in Europe, but well beyond, in support of Ukraine and in defense of these principles that Russia also attacked back in February of that year. I worked very hard in the lead up to the war, including meetings with my Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Geneva a couple of months before the war, trying to find a way to see if we could prevent it, trying to test the proposition whether this was really about Russia’s concerns for its security, concerns somehow about Ukraine and the threat that it posed, or NATO and the threat that it posed, or whether this was about what it in fact it is about, which is Putin’s imperial ambitions and the desire to recreate a greater Russia, to subsume Ukraine back into Russia. But we had to test that proposition. And we were intensely engaged diplomatically with Russia. Since then, had there been any opportunity to engage diplomatically in a way that could end the war on just and durable terms, we would have been the first to seize them. Unfortunately, at least until this moment, we haven’t seen any signs that Russia has been genuinely prepared to engage. I hope that that changes.

Ukraine has been left in this position now where a new administration is coming in, and they have a very different view of the conflict. And one could argue that Ukraine is not in a terribly strong position to be able to navigate what comes next. We know that President-elect Trump has people that surround him that are very willing to see Ukraine cede territory to Russia. There has been no parallel diplomatic track, and the weapons are probably going to be drying up. Do you feel you’ve left Ukraine in the strongest position that you could have? Or were there things that you could have done differently? 

Well, first, what we’ve left is Ukraine, which was not self-evident because Putin’s ambition was to erase it from the map. We stopped that. Putin has failed. Ukraine is standing. And I believe it also has extraordinary potential not only to survive but to thrive going forward. And that does depend on decisions that the future administration and many other countries will make.

Do you think it’s time to end the war, though? 

 These are decisions for Ukrainians to make. They have to decide where their future is and how they want to get there. Where the line is drawn on the map at this point, I don’t think is fundamentally going to change very much.

You mean that the areas that Russia controls you feel will have to be ceded?  

Ceded is not the question. The question is the line, as a practical matter in the foreseeable future, is unlikely to move very much. Ukraine’s claim on that territory will always, always be there. And the question is, will they find ways with the support of others to regain territory that’s been lost? It’s unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions. If there’s a cease-fire, then, in Putin’s mind, the cease-fire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to reattack at some point in the future. So what’s going to be critical to make sure that any cease-fire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression. And that can come in many forms. It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership. It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries to make sure that Russia knows that if it reattacks, it’s going to have a big problem.

What I’m hearing you say is that Ukraine’s fate will no longer rest in its major supporter, the United States. You see it as resting elsewhere, Europe? 

Look, I hope very much — and I don’t want to say expect, but I certainly hope very much — that the United States will remain the vital supporter that it’s been for Ukraine, because, again, this is not just about Ukraine. It’s never just been about Ukraine.

This is one of the conflicts that will be handed back to Trump. His approach to foreign policy writ large seems to be to avoid engaging militarily while wanting the world to be scared of us. He doesn’t seem terribly interested in the work of diplomacy. I’m curious how you would define that foreign-policy philosophy and what you think of that approach. 

To me, as I said before, in the absence of American diplomacy, you’re going to have diplomacy by lots of other countries that are going to shape the world in ways that may not be so friendly to our own interests and our own values. So that’s the choice. We can disengage. We can not be present. We can stand back. But we know others will step in, and we have to decide whether that’s in our interest.

It’s not that he wants to stand back. It’s that he uses other methods to make countries bend to America’s will. 

Let’s take a concrete example. Let’s talk about China for a minute. I think President Trump was right during his first administration in identifying some of the challenges posed by China. No country has the capacity that China does to reshape the international system that we and many others put in place after the Second World War. It has the military power, the economic power, the diplomatic power to do that in ways that no other country does. And we also know that many of the practices it’s engaged in have been grossly unfair to our workers, to our companies, undercutting them, driving them out of business. So I think he was right in identifying that problem.

Where I would disagree with the approach he took and where I would commend to him the approach that we pursued is, we’re so much more effective in dealing with the challenges posed by China when we’re working closely with other countries. When we took office, the European Union was on the verge of signing a major trade agreement with China. They weren’t sure if they could count on the United States. We’d had real challenges in the relationships in the preceding four years, and they were hedging toward China. So were many other countries. We were really on the decline when it came to dealing with China diplomatically and economically. We’ve reversed that. The way we’ve approached it is we’ve sought to bring other countries in when we’re dealing with China’s economic practices that we don’t like. We’re 20 percent of world G.D.P. When we aligned Europeans, key allies and partners in the Asia Pacific, we’re suddenly 40, 50, 60 percent of world G.D.P., something that China can’t ignore. And I know it’s succeeding because every time I meet with my Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, the foreign minister, he inevitably spends 30 or 40 minutes, 60 minutes complaining about everything we’ve done to align other countries to build this convergence in dealing with things that we don’t like that China is pursuing. So to me, that is the proof point that we’re much better off through diplomacy.

Do you think that Trump’s plan to place heavy tariffs on Chinese goods — up to possibly 60 percent blanket tariffs — and also to place tariffs on our allies, Canada and other countries, is that misguided? 

Look, tariffs have their place.

The Biden administration had their own. 

And I think when they’re strategically focused, then they can be a very effective and important tool. Look, the jury’s out on exactly what the incoming administration does. We’ll see. All I’m saying is I think there is a strategic utility, but when you do them across the board, then the people who usually pay the price are consumers.

I want to turn to what has become the defining crisis of this era, which is the conflict in Gaza. You came in thinking you could broker a historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. And then Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 with the horrific results, which we saw. And Israel’s response has been extreme. The latest U.N. figures put the Palestinian death toll at 45,000. Over 90 percent of Gaza’s population is now displaced. The population is starving. All hospitals have been destroyed. In November, a U.N. committee released a report that found Israel’s warfare practices “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.” I know you don’t agree with that estimation, but do you believe that Israel’s actions have been consistent with the rules of war?  

You’re right: On Oct. 6 we were very much pursuing normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. And in fact, I was scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia and Israel on Oct. 10. Obviously, that didn’t happen. But the purpose of that trip was to work on the Palestinian component of any normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, because we believed and the Saudis also said it was hugely important to make sure that if there was going to be normalization, there was also a pathway toward a Palestinian state. Well, as I said, that trip didn’t happen.

Since Oct. 7, we’ve had some core goals in mind. I was there. I was in Israel and then in the region five days later. I saw horrors beyond anyone’s imagination inflicted on men, women and children. And we were determined to do everything we could to help ensure that Oct. 7 would never happen again. We also wanted to make sure that the war wouldn’t spread, the conflict wouldn’t spread to other fronts, to other countries, because that would mean more death and destruction. It would also mean that the actions Israel was taking in Gaza were likely to endure even longer. Third, we wanted to make sure to the best of our ability that the children, the women, the men in Gaza who were caught in the crossfire of Hamas’s initiation that they did not start and were basically powerless to stop were as protected as possible and got the assistance they needed to survive this horrific conflict. And we’ve been working on each of those fronts every day since. When it comes to making sure that Oct. 7 can’t happen again, I think we’re in a good place. Israel has destroyed Hamas’s military capabilities. It’s eliminated the leadership that was responsible for Oct. 7.

While destroying the territory. There’s huge suffering and —  

No one needs to remind me of the suffering, because it’s something that drives me every single day. It’s exactly why we’ve done everything in our power to find a way to get an end to the conflict through getting the hostages back and getting a cease-fire.

Even Israel’s former defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, referred to what’s happening as war crimes and ethnic cleansing. This is internal criticism. This is not external. So I guess I would repeat the question and ask you, Has Israel respected the rules of war in Gaza?  

We, as you know, have looked and continue to look at that in depth. And we put out our own reports on this with our own assessments. And when it comes to the actions that Israel has taken, in its just defense in trying to make sure that Oct. 7 never happens again, we’ve said from Day 1 that how Israel does that matters. And throughout, starting on Day 1, we tried to ensure that people had what they needed to to get by. The very first trip that I made to Israel five days after Oct. 7, I spent with my team nine hours in the I.D.F.’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, six stories underground with the Israeli government, including the prime minister, including arguing for hours on end about the basic proposition that the humanitarian assistance needed to get to Palestinians in Gaza. And that was an argument that took place because you had in Israel in the days after Oct. 7 a totally traumatized society. This wasn’t just the prime minister or a given leader in Israel. This was an entire society that didn’t want any assistance getting to a single Palestinian in Gaza. I argued that for nine hours. President Biden was planning to come to Israel a few days later. And in the course of that argument, when I was getting resistance to the proposition of humanitarian assistance getting in, I told the prime minister, I’m going to call the president and tell him not to come if you don’t allow this assistance to start flowing. And I called the president to make sure that he agreed with that, and he fully did. We got the agreement to begin assistance through Rafah, which we expanded to Kerem Shalom and many other places. We’ve tried all along to look out for the needs of so many people who’ve been caught in this horrific crossfire. And we have a traumatized Palestinian population. I’ve met with Palestinian Americans who’ve lost loved ones in Gaza. I have with me still a little brochure that one fellow American made that has pictures of his family in Gaza — on the left side, those who were killed, including children, and on the right side, those who are still alive. And that motivates me as well every single day to try to find a better way forward. Now, Israel is operating in a unique environment, which doesn’t absolve it of its responsibilities —

But have they met those responsibilities? 

When it comes, for example, to the provision of humanitarian assistance, we’ve found periods of time where, no, we didn’t think they were doing enough. And this is exactly why, most recently with Secretary of Defense Austin, we pressed them very hard to take actions that would ensure that more assistance got to people.

Withholding food aid is considered a war crime. And so what you’re saying to me is that actually they didn’t want to even provide food? 

There’s a big difference between intent and result, whether it’s under the law or under any one standard. The results that we were seeing were grossly insufficient. That is, the results in getting people the assistance they needed. Just as making sure that people are protected, I think has been insufficient. There’s a very different question about what was the intent.

What we’ve seen in Gaza is fairly indiscriminate. Entire areas flattened. And at the crux of this is the fact that the United States provides so many of these weapons to Israel. The 2,000-pound bombs that have killed Palestinian civilians were vetted through the State Department. And I know that the administration has been struggling with this the whole way through. But where we are now is that the war is still being prosecuted. Hamas is no longer deemed a threat in the way that it was, and the population has been completely decimated. So I’m curious, why still provide these weapons to Israel?  

First of all, we have been and we remain fundamentally committed to Israel’s defense, and unfortunately it faces adversaries and enemies from all directions. And that means that the support that the United States provides over many administrations, Republican and Democrat, over many years, that support is absolutely vital to making sure that Israel is able to defend itself, that it can deter aggression coming from many other quarters, whether it’s Hezbollah, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s the many Iranian-backed proxies, whether it’s the Houthis, you name it. That support is vital to making sure Israel has a deterrent, has an adequate defense. And in turn, that means that we’re not going to have an even broader, wider conflict that results in more death and more destruction. And so it’s been vital to maintain that.

Second, we continue to believe that the quickest way, the most effective way to have an enduring end to Gaza is through an agreement on a cease-fire that brings the hostages home. The two biggest impediments to getting that over the finish line — and we’ve been so close on several occasions and as we speak today, we’re also very close — there have been two major impediments, and they both go to what drives Hamas. One has been whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages. And so there are times when what we say in private to Israel where we have a disagreement is one thing, and what we’re doing or saying in public may be another. But that’s in no small measure because with this daylight, the prospects of getting the hostage and cease-fire deal over the finish line become more distant.

There were moments when it seemed you were trying to draw red lines in public, telling Israel not to go into Rafah, for example. And then they did. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, never seemed to listen to you.  

No, I disagree with that. And again, I mentioned how we’ve gone at humanitarian assistance from Day 1, and that’s been a perennial and ongoing effort throughout this time. When it comes to Rafah, we had deep, deep concerns about a direct attack and the use of the 2,000-pound munitions in densely populated areas. What Israel wound up doing in Rafah was very different from what they were planning to do before we engaged with them.

So you feel as if you’ve been effective in shaping the conduct of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s — 

I think the question we had was how can we most effectively both shape the conflict but also bring an end to the conflict. And the focus on getting a cease-fire, a hostage agreement was what was, in our estimation, the quickest and most durable way to get an end. And as I said, Hamas, when they saw Israel under pressure publicly, they pulled back. The other thing that got Hamas to pull back was their belief, their hope that there would be a wider conflict, that Hezbollah would attack Israel, that Iran would attack Israel, that other actors would attack Israel, and that Israel would have its hands full and Hamas could continue what it was doing. So we’ve worked very hard to make sure that that didn’t happen.

Did you have a partner in Benjamin Netanyahu? Because it was reported that he blocked a cease-fire deal in July that would have led to the hostages being released. Is that true? 

No, that’s not accurate. What we’ve seen time and again is Hamas not concluding a deal that it should have concluded. There have been times when actions that Israel has taken have, yes, made it more difficult. But there’s been a rationale for those actions, even if they’ve sometimes made getting to a conclusion more difficult. For example, the killing of Yahya Sinwar. In the absence of Sinwar, where you had basically a single decider, that happened just at the point where we thought we might be able to bring this agreement over the finish line, all of a sudden there’s not a single decider, and it’s a lot harder to get a decision out of Hamas. So all of these actions have second- and third-order effects that you have to calculate.

But fundamentally, look, one of the things that I found a little astounding throughout is that for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas. Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender — I don’t know what the answer is to that. Israel, on various occasions has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza. Where is the world? Where is the world, saying, Yeah, do that! End this! Stop the suffering of people that you brought on! Now, again, that doesn’t absolve Israel of its actions in conducting the war. But I do have to question how it is that we haven’t seen a greater sustained condemnation and pressure on Hamas to stop what it started and to end the suffering of people that it initiated.

You’ve had a series of very public defections at the State Department over Gaza. The latest to speak out is Mike Casey, who was the State Department’s deputy political counselor on Gaza and resigned in July. He recently talked to The Guardian about his tenure, and he claimed that the State Department frequently rolled over for Israel, that no one would read his reports on civilian casualties. He said that he and his colleagues would joke that they could staple cash to the reports and still they would fall on deaf ears. That’s very dark. How do you respond to that? 

I have inordinate respect for the people in this department who have not only had different views of the policies that we’ve pursued but have expressed those views, including in what’s been a time-honored tradition of the department, which is something called a dissent-channel cable. This is the ability of any officer in the department to send a message, a memo, a cable to me reflecting their differences. And every single one of those winds up on my desk. Every single one of those I read. Every single one of those I respond to, including 20 or so on Gaza. And some, of course, have brought forward some of these facts. I didn’t need dissent-channel cables to have the facts in front of me. I get them every single day. I read everything. I comment on everything. I look for answers on everything. Does that mean we get to the right answers every time? No. But does it mean we’re intensely focused on it? Yes. And again, my goal has been to end this conflict in Gaza in a way that makes sure that Oct. 7 doesn’t happen again, that ends the suffering of people and does it in an enduring way that brings the hostages home.

Do you think there are still hostages alive?  

Yes.

Do you, Secretary Blinken, worry that perhaps you have been presiding over what the world will see as a genocide? 

No. It’s not, first of all. Second, as to how the world sees it, I can’t fully answer to that. But everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts. And my conclusions are clear. I think as well, there is, in the wake of this horrific suffering — the traumatization of the Israeli population, the Palestinian population and many others — there’s also a light that one can see that offers the prospect of a much different and much better future. It doesn’t bring back the lives of those who have been lost. It doesn’t bring back the parents of the children in Gaza, or the children for parents in Israel who lost theirs on Oct. 7. But it does offer a different way forward. And we’ve done an extraordinary amount of work to build the foundation for that. First, you’ve got to end the conflict in Gaza. I believe it will end, and it will probably end more or less on the terms that we’ve established in the hostage cease-fire agreement that President Biden put forward, that we got the whole world behind. It will land there. Second, you have to make sure it’s enduring. We’ve spent months working on a post-conflict plan with many countries in the region, Arab partners in particular. If we don’t have the opportunity to start to try to implement it through a hostage cease-fire agreement in the next couple of weeks, we will hand it off to the incoming Trump administration, and they can decide whether to move forward with it. Third, we have the prospect of a totally different region with normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and many other countries, Israel integrated into the security architecture of the region, and because it will be a requirement of any such normalization agreement, a real pathway to a Palestinian state. We’ve done all of the work to put those plans in place. Normalization with Saudi Arabia, that can happen tomorrow based on the work that we’ve done, the investments we’ve made, once there is an end to the conflict in Gaza and an agreement on a credible path forward for the Palestinians. All of that work is there. That’s what we’ll be handing over. But it requires leaders to make really hard decisions, and it requires somehow moving beyond the trauma of two societies, Israeli and Palestinian. That’s going to be the really hard part.

There has been a lot of reporting on President Biden’s declining abilities over the course of his term. You are one of the closest people to him. You have worked with him for decades. By some accounts, he considers you a surrogate son. This is a delicate question to ask, but I do feel that many Americans want to understand if you saw changes from the man that you know so well.  

Here’s what I can tell you: Look at everything we’ve done. Whether you agree or not, I think there’s a very strong record of achievement, historic in many ways. Every single one of those achievements has been the product of a decision made by the president of the United States, by President Biden. Not by others in the administration — by the president. His judgment, his decision, his action has been reflected in what we’ve done, what we have achieved. That’s the basis upon which to judge whether he’s been an effective president. And I believe the answer is resoundingly yes.

Last summer my colleague Robert Draper reported that people in the diplomatic corps worried that the president’s memory, for example, was showing signs of slipping while he was meeting with foreign leaders. 

Look, we all change. We all age. I have a 4-, soon to be 5-year-old daughter. I was sitting with her the other day, and she was saying, Daddy’s wearing a white shirt. He’s got a blue suit, he has black shoes and he has gray hair. And I said, No, no, no, my hair’s brown. And she said, No, it’s gray. We all get older. We all change as we get older. But again, what I’ve seen when it comes to judgment, when it comes to decisions that do right by the country, he’s shown that judgment. He’s made those decisions.

Your own story is very much defined by this fight against autocracy. Your stepfather was a Holocaust survivor who was saved from the death camps by American soldiers. You’ve said that you learned lessons from him about what our country is and what it represents and what it means when the United States is engaged in leading. I’m wondering, as you look at the end of your tenure, and you’re handing off, as we’ve discussed, many of these conflicts that are still unresolved, and you have come under a lot of criticism: Do his lessons strike you differently now than they did before?  

My friend Tom Friedman wrote a few months ago a column that basically said, Parents, don’t let your sons and daughters grow up to be secretary of state. It’s a different world than it was when some of my predecessors were doing this. But some basic fundamentals haven’t changed, at least for me. And yes, it does go to the lessons that I learned from my stepfather, from my father and other relatives, almost all of whom came to this country as immigrants, as refugees fleeing oppression, fleeing, in the case of my stepfather, the war and the Holocaust that eliminated his entire family. My stepfather eventually made his way here and even served in the Kennedy administration. You could become an American by special act of Congress, which he was. So Congress passes an act, and he became an American citizen. And he used to say, Never forget: I’m an American by choice. You’re an American by accident and birth. And I take that very seriously, because what it means to me is there is an extraordinary responsibility that comes with being an American. A responsibility that comes from being part of the greatest country on earth. And if you’re in public service, as I’ve had the incredible privilege of being for 32 years, a responsibility to try to use that in the best way that you can to do better by your fellow citizens, but also people around the world. And every time, every place I’ve been around the world, everything I’ve heard, even with criticism, intense criticism of our policies, is people want the United States involved. They want us engaged, they want us leading. They know that we’re more likely to get to a solution when we’re at the table than without us.

Director of photography (video): Leslye Davis

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See more on: President Joe Biden, State Department, U.S. Politics, The Israel Hamas War, Russia-Ukraine War, North Atlantic Treaty Organization

 

For Many of Us, Jan. 6 Never Ended [washingtonpost]. Aquilino Gonell. Mr. Gonell is a former sergeant in the Capitol Police .

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/opinion/jan-6-pardons.html

For Many of Us, Jan. 6 Never Ended

Jan. 5, 2025

 

By Aquilino Gonell

Mr. Gonell is a former sergeant in the Capitol Police and the author, with Susan Shapiro, of “American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy.”

For those who didn’t experience the violence, Jan. 6, 2021, might feel like it’s in the past — but it’s not for me. I keep reliving the five horrific hours of that cold Wednesday afternoon, as I tried to protect elected officials, regardless of their political ideology, and their staffs inside the Capitol building — all without firing my gun.

For my efforts doing my duty as a Capitol Police sergeant, I was beaten and struck by raging rioters all over my body with multiple weapons until I was covered in my own blood. My hand, foot and shoulder were wounded. I thought I was going to die and never make it home to see my wife and young son.

Over the last four years, it’s been devastating to me to hear Donald Trump repeat his promise to pardon insurrectionists on the first day he’s back in office. “It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” he said in a speech last year. But all of us who were there and anyone who watched on TV know that those who stormed the Capitol were not peaceful protesters. Pardoning them would be an outrageous mistake, one that could mean about 800 convicted criminals will be back on the street.

It could also put me in danger, as I’ve continued to testify in court and I’ve given victim statements in cases against dozens of the rioters who assaulted me and my fellow officers.

I was one of the fortunate ones that day; nine people wound up dead as a result of the rampage. Two protesters had fatal medical episodes, one rioter overdosed during the uproar and another was fatally shot by a policeman while forcing her way into the House Chamber. One of my colleagues, 42-year-old Officer Brian Sicknick, suffered two strokes after the trauma of fighting off multiple protesters who sprayed him with a chemical irritant. He didn’t survive. Four D.C. policemen harmed in the riots later died by suicide.

My friend Harry Dunn, the first law enforcement member to prominently condemn the brazen uprising, testified about our primitive hand-to-hand fighting against improvised weaponry like flagpoles, metal bike racks and projectiles, with officers bleeding, blinded and coughing from bear spray. Harry, who was called racial slurs, has since retired his blue uniform. My co-worker Michael Fanone was beaten, burned and electrically shocked. He suffered a heart attack, concussion and traumatic brain injury that caused him to also leave his position at the Metropolitan Police. While physically recovering, he’s been the target of constant harassment from Trump supporters and has struggled to find steady work. Steven Sund, who was the Capitol Police chief, has been scapegoated and resigned under pressure.

I required multiple surgeries, years of rehab and treatment for recurrences of the post-traumatic stress disorder I was diagnosed with in the Army. I was vilified and called “a traitor,” as Mr. Trump and some of his fellow Republicans called the riot a “day of love” and a “peaceful protest” by “warriors,” “patriots,” “political prisoners” and “mistreated hostages.”

Although I left the Capitol Police force, I remain haunted by that day. Now Mr. Trump’s promised actions could erase the justice we’ve risked everything for.

I never wanted to be a whistle-blower or a troublemaker. I grew up poor in the Dominican Republic, came to this country legally at age 12 and became the first in my family to finish high school and college. I lived in Brooklyn, just a few miles from where Mr. Trump grew up in Queens, yet the metaphoric distance between us was vast. My dad was a taxi driver who could give me only $100 to help pay for college. Mr. Trump’s father was a real estate developer who bequeathed him at least $413 million over the years. While Mr. Trump escaped the Vietnam draft with a medical exemption for bone spurs and never served in the military, I finished my degree with the help of the G.I. Bill after I enlisted and served in the Middle East. What I experienced defending the Capitol against rioters was worse than the combat I saw in Iraq.

What helped me was bearing witness. In the four years since the riot, about 1,561 defendants have been federally charged with Jan. 6 crimes, many of them serious felonies ranging from unlawfully entering restricted grounds with weapons to seditious conspiracy. Approximately 590 defendants have been charged with assault on a federal officer and 169 have been charged with crimes involving serious bodily harm to a police officer, including assault using a deadly or dangerous weapon; the weapons included swords, axes, knives, Taser-like devices, baseball bats, hockey sticks and reinforced knuckle gloves. More than 300 pleaded guilty to felonies and more than 200 were found guilty at trial.

Releasing those who assaulted us from blame would be a desecration of justice. If Mr. Trump wants to heal our divided nation, he’ll let their convictions stand.

Although I don’t blame all Trump supporters — some of my own relatives support him — I do detest what MAGA extremism did to me and my team on Jan. 6. I resent the ongoing whitewashing of the barbarity and the collective amnesia of right-wing politicians who aren’t willing to hold Mr. Trump accountable. I can’t bear to hear Republicans describe themselves as the “law and order” party.

Mr. Trump is returning to the presidency at 78, while I had to leave the career I’d worked for my whole life at 42 as a result of injuries suffered while doing my job. I sometimes wonder why I risked my life to defend our elected officials from a mob inspired by Mr. Trump, only to see him return to power stronger than ever. It’s hard to witness a rich white man get rewarded for treachery while I’m punished for fulfilling my duty. Maybe that’s why so many people don’t do the right thing — because it’s hard and it hurts.

When Mr. Trump recently proclaimed that members of the House Jan. 6 committee should go to jail, Representative Jamie Raskin responded, “In America, we jail people only for having committed criminal offenses that they are found guilty of by a unanimous jury of their peers. We don’t jail people for doing their jobs and living up to their constitutional oaths of office.”

It gave me hope when Mr. Raskin further reminded everyone that Mr. Trump was impeached for his role in inspiring a violent insurrection against the Constitution. I admire Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who put fairness before party, despite being censured and threatened for their work on the committee.

At least I get to hear my son call me his hero, as we remember the people who put everything on the line to protect our democracy and continue to tell the truth about Jan. 6.

Aquilino Gonell is a former sergeant in the Capitol Police and the author, with Susan Shapiro, of “American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy.”

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A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 6, 2025, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: For Many of Us, Jan. 6 Never Ended. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe