This is a strange day for me, so I’m forced to post piecemeal what would normally be an ethics warm-up with 4-6 items. Sorry.

1. I listed to “Border Czar” Tom Homan’s press conference in Minnesota. Those conservatives who were frantic that I.C.E. was going to stand down in the state, representing a Trump surrender to a mob and the unethical, inciting elected officials egging the mob on, were, of course, wrong.

It would have been nice if he had acknowledged that some of the statements coming from Administration officials following the tragic deaths of two protesters interfering with I.C.E. operations were premature, inappropriate, and gratuitously inflammatory, but such a concession was strategically and diplomatically impossible, since he would have been criticizing his superiors.

Homan’s best moment was when a female reporter, her tone throbbing with anger and hostility, asked if, as she thought was what Trump had promised during the campaign, I.C.E. would focus only on illegal immigrants who had committed serious or violent crimes. That this would be a responsible policy is a persistent progressive delusion stemming from the “Good Illegal Immigrant” narrative, and Homan knocked the question out of the metaphorical park.

He said that if the government’s position became what the reporter was advocating, then it would be an invitation to those living anywhere in the world where conditions and opportunities are worse than in the U.S.—a.k.a. “everywhere”—to try to get into this country by any means necessary. That, he noted, was basically the message the Biden administration was sending for four disastrous years. Yes, the first priority of I.C.E. must be to apprehend the most violent and worst criminals among the illegal immigration population, but no illegal immigrants belong here regardless of when or why they arrived and what they have done since arriving. Sending a clear message that breaching our borders is forever sufficient to warrant deportation is a crucial element of border security.

1. (a) It’s more than annoying that Homan is such a mushmouth. I suppose he can’t help it, but the man is only marginally more understandable than Gabby Johnson (“Rarit!”) in “Blazing Saddles.” Being able to communicate clearly is an element of professional competence. The substance of Homan’s presentation was excellent, but there were whole sentences I couldn’t translate at all.