There are very good, professional men and women on the front lines, doing triage in this morass of immigration confusion. We can disagree on policy, but we find common ground in faith and values that call us to be humane.

The immigration officer I dealt with in Philadelphia was a truly decent man. He tried, while following the law, to be compassionate and dispassionate at the same time. He did his job, but showed immense respect to the poor fellow who is now a continent away.

I spent some hours this week trying to prevent a deportation. I wasn’t successful. It happens, the law must be followed and sometimes the clock runs out. I get it, and I have mental calluses.

The same is true for violent protest that threatens free speech. Government neutrality must be maintained so as to protect all peaceful speech equally.

The police must and should keep the peace. But they must simultaneously protect peaceful free speech -- even if that requires the use of force.

When it comes to police enforcing free-speech rights, however, all speech must be treated identically. The state must be neutral with respect to the speakers’ viewpoints, and blind to their content.

Yet the effect of removing the isolated, vulnerable speaker faced with counterprotest is to silence the few while allowing the counterprotesters to prevail. That’s a violation of our free-speech ideals, which value everyone’s words equally, regardless of how many people are gathered to speak at a given location in a given moment.

Consider that when a lone speaker is being met with large counterprotests, it’s always easier, cheaper and safer for police to remove the speaker than it is to control the counterprotesters. That’s the law of numbers.

That’s why it is worrisome to hear police say that it wasn’t worth fighting antifa over “a grassy area.” What was at stake wasn’t just a patch of grass, but the public space where peaceful speech was taking place. Protecting the First Amendment has to be a key police objective.

The point is that while avoiding violence is a necessary goal, it is also a competing and important goal for the police to protect peaceful speech from violent threats. In the name of avoiding violence, the police must not cede public space to violent protesters -- regardless of whether they are far left or far right.

To be clear, my goal is not to criticize the police. Their thankless and crucial job of keeping the peace is the necessary condition for free speech. Avoiding violence should be a high priority, sometimes the highest. Contextual judgment is crucial.

Imagine that 100 neo-Nazis, instead of 100 anti-fascists, had crossed barricades in defiance of police orders. The public would have been justifiably outraged. And a police chief who argued that it was wiser to withdraw his officers rather than provoke confrontation would be under significant pressure to recant or even resign.

With all due deference to police expertise, things are not that simple. Violent protesters who cross barriers and disrupt peaceful protest are deeply threatening to freedom of speech.

In November, President Moon will be attending the ASEAN Plus Summits in the Philippines as well as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vietnam, and it is anticipated that these occasions will further expand the horizon of ASEAN-Korea relations.

“The Philippines is not pro-US, pro-China, or pro-Japan, but it is pro-Philippines and pro-ASEAN,” is what the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, Alan Peter Cayetano, said while he was answering a flurry of questions on the South China Sea issue and the

There is a saying, “it takes two hands to clap.” This means that for ASEAN-Korea relations to prosper, it cannot be done one-way — it must be two-way and reciprocal. For Korea to map out a meaningful vision and strategy for ASEAN-Korea relations, it should first know

Last but not least, all of these endeavors should add up to building a peaceful and prosperous East Asia. ASEAN’s efforts to fully achieve a more integrated ASEAN areinseparable from building the East Asian Community, while Korea also should make contributions to building the EAC and bringing peace and prosperity to the region through supporting ASEAN’s community-building efforts.

Fifth, Korea should more actively share its development strategy and experience with ASEAN. It is important to be a partner that can help each other and in this sense, Korea should cooperate closely with the ASEAN member states with the capacity building of its

partner and the second largest destination for investment, for ASEAN, Korea is the fifth largest partner for trade and investment, and would be the best partner for technological cooperation amid ASEAN’s current efforts of transforming into a digital economy.

Third, for ASEAN-Korea relations to be long-lasting, it must be mutually beneficial. The economies of ASEAN and Korea are complementary, and they are already partners that need and want each other. For example, while ASEAN is Korea’s second largest trading

In doing so, the following six elements must be considered to make Korea’s vision and strategy more seamless and sustainable. The first element is middle-power diplomacy. Much of the uncertainty in the Asia-Pacific region is in one way or another related to the