Well, folks, every once in a while the internet gets something right.

A Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 13th District posted online that ICE is "terrorizing" her community. That's the word she chose. Terrorizing. And the people she claims to speak for, actual immigrants who came here the right way, took one look at that and said, loudly and clearly: you don't speak for us.

You can read the whole thing over at The Nerd Stash, and I suggest you do, because the responses are something to behold.

Let me tell you something. I taught fourth grade for 34 years, and if a child had used the word "terrorizing" to describe the officers who enforce our laws, I'd have had that child write a letter home explaining himself. A grown woman running for Congress ought to know better.

Terrorism is what happened on 9/11. Terrorism is what we've seen in shopping malls and marathon finish lines. ICE agents showing up with a warrant to arrest somebody who broke our laws to get here and broke more of them once they arrived? That's called enforcement, sweetheart. That's a country functioning the way it's supposed to.

And the part that made me want to stand up and applaud at my kitchen table? The loudest pushback came from legal immigrants. People who filled out the forms. People who waited in line for years, sometimes a decade or more, learning our history and our civics and reciting the oath. They looked at this woman putting on sorrow on their behalf and they said, absolutely not. Don't use us as your prop. We followed the rules, and we're not going to sit quietly while you lump us in with people who didn't.

One of these fine men and women said it plainly: they came here to get away from places where the rules didn't matter, and they'll be darned if they'll watch politicians pretend rules don't matter here either.

I've written before about the men and women of ICE. They get up every morning and do a job that half of Hollywood and most of Manhattan despises them for, and they do it anyway. They arrest criminals. They keep towns safe. And then some candidate types out a sentence comparing them to terrorists from her couch, probably with a latte going cold beside her, and expects a round of applause.

She got a round of something, all right.

The timing tells you everything, too. We're weeks from an election, and calling ICE the bad guys is apparently still the play in certain corners of New York City. Never mind that everyday folks, immigrant and native-born alike, are tired of the shoplifters, the gangs, the rap sheets longer than my grocery list. They want order. They want the laws enforced. That's not a radical idea; that's the bare minimum we're owed.

What warms me is watching people who did it the right way refuse to be used, and the dignity that comes with it. It's the kind of dignity you can't fake and you can't buy, and Lord knows you can't run a campaign on it if you spent the week insulting the very officers who protect your future constituents.

To the legal immigrants who spoke up this week: welcome to the neighborhood. You sound like Americans to me, the kind I'd be proud to have on my street, flying the flag on the Fourth like you mean it. Because you do mean it. You earned it.

And to the candidate? Sweetie, when the people you're "speaking for" tell you to hush, the correct move is to hush. Take it from a teacher. Class dismissed.