NYC pushes a propaganda comic to oppose deportation of illegal immigrants

The New York Daily News wrote a fawning report about a new comic published by NYC's education department that tells illegal immigrants about their "rights" as the Trump administration makes an effort to deport interlopers who entered the USA without proper permits:

As deportations rise in President Trump’s second term, New York City schools have made efforts on several fronts to inform immigrant families of their rights in a sanctuary city.

But education officials were in search of a medium to better share the information with young people.

This week, the NYC Department of Education released “Know Your Rights,” a 32-page comic book based on real events in the news and with guidance from Mayor Mamdani’s immigrant affairs office. In an introduction, the authors wrote their hope is the comic can help educate the public and prepare immigrant students and their families for potential encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or “ICE.” [...]

The rights presented in the comic represent a doubling down on New York’s sanctuary city laws, which, among other protections, maintain that non-local law enforcement, such as ICE, can’t enter a public school without a judicial warrant.

The city’s approach has been a flashpoint of controversy amid the Trump immigration crackdown. The Trump administration has tried going after the city’s policies for undocumented immigrants, including by filing a federal lawsuit last summer. Mamdani signed an executive order as recently as February reinforcing New York’s sanctuary status.

The comic book is the latest school-based initiative aimed at supporting immigrant students — a list that also includes a program that connects teachers with resources to support newcomer families, and informal networks of parents and advocates who serve as rapid response teams when a child or their parent is detained. It’s the 42nd comic published by the city’s public school system, which uses in-house graphic texts as part of its social studies and civics curriculum.

The comic is expected to be distributed in schools, alongside a resource guide and lesson plan for educators. So far, 75,000 copies of the comic have been printed in English, and 75,000 in Spanish. Education officials said they’re on track to translate the comic into a dozen other languages in a digital format this month,. [...]

In one of the stories, readers meet the fictional Alfonso family as an ICE agent knocks on their apartment door in Jamaica, Queens. Rodrigo Alfonso tells his son, Diego, to open the door. But Diego knows his rights and tells his dad: “Not yet.”

Rodrigo is uncertain, but at his son’s urging, complies. The graphic text instructs Rodrigo to ask the agents, some depicted in face masks to shield their identity, who they are, what they’re there for, and if they have a warrant to enter his home. The vignette shows the importance of informing students of their rights, Samuels said, “so that they can be advocates for themselves and for others.”

So in other words, the comic is lecturing all that law enforcement does not apply to anyone who enters the country without documented permits, no matter what they do upon entry. But that's the sad reality NYC's become practically in over several years, and now they're tarnishing the comics medium with something so insulting to the intellect, and in contrast to a lot of older comics stories from decades past, the NYC education department's comic villifies law enforcement whose job is to prevent criminals from infiltrating. This all reminds me of a line from the 1968 movie What's So Bad About Feeling Good? where a comical toucan said in a word balloon, "New York is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here." And it would be ill-advised to invest in the Big Apple's businesses with the way they could be going too.