For decades I have been hearing the old courtroom saying about how a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if given the chance, but I never expected to see it happen. What the saying conveys is that grand juries, which approve or reject charges to go to trial, only hear from one side, the prosecution, and only have to find probable cause to believe a crime happened, which is a very low fence for any prosecutor to get over.

But leave it to the Justice Department of President Donald Trump to fail at that elementary first step, and then to try to charge the ham sandwich on a lesser offense, and finally to fail at trial to make even that charge stick. That’s what culminated last week not in the trial of a sandwich but rather of a man who threw one at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent patrolling the streets of Washington D.C.

According to the charging documents and video of the incident, Sean Charles Dunn, 37, came upon the group of federal agents, cursed at them and called them “fascist” before heaving the sandwich into the ballistic vest of CBP Agent Greg Lairmore.

Dunn, like many residents of the nation’s capital, was upset by the surge of federal agents and National Guard soldiers into the city to do the work that normally falls to beat cops. After leading federal agents on a merry chase down the street, Dunn was apprehended and charged with something like assault by hoagie. A federal grand jury rejected a felony charge, so the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro had to settle for a misdemeanor charge.

The case of “the sandwich guy” went viral and became a stunning example in many minds of how the Trump administration’s supposedly serious immigration crackdown, now in its third month, has run amok. Dunn was fired from his job as a paralegal at the Justice Department, which is a tough break, although he did gain minor hero status among Americans fed up by the lawlessness and arrogance of the Trump administration in turning pleasant neighborhoods into scenes of a police state.

Among other signs of public outrage, street art appeared drawn in the style of the guerilla artist Banksy of a masked youth heaving a sandwich instead of a Molotov cocktail. In the trial itself, it was revealed that Lairmore could barely feel the impact through his tactical vest, and that the greatest injury he suffered was the smell of onions and mustards. And the ridicule of his CBP partners. The jury voted to acquit.

Like many Americans, I’m amused by the episode, but not because I don’t like cops or don’t care about law and order. Quite the opposite, I am appalled by the harm Trump and his Justice Department are doing to law and order in this country.

Unfortunately, despite his administration’s promise to go after the “worst of the worst” offenders, Trump’s policies to tighten immigration enforcement appear to have done more to create disorder, divide families and frighten small children than make any of us feel safer.

Some of the worst examples have come from, of all people, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, the official tasked with leading the Chicago crackdown. He admitted last week to a very serious offense, lying about a rock-throwing incident used to justify deploying tear gas against protestors. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction limiting the use of force during immigration arrests and protests. For example, video showed him throwing a gas canister at protesters in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood without giving so much as a “look out below,” despite the judge’s earlier temporary restraining order limiting the use of force.

Stories like these remind me of how Trump recently suggested using our cities, which he specified as “Democrat-run cities,” to train our military troops. Train them to do what? Create disorder? Americans see what Trump is doing, and they don’t like it. Trump may not want to believe it, but that’s what voters told him in last Tuesday’s elections.

(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)