Sanctuary Cities Invite Tragedies; Immigrant Activists Cover For Them

Sanctuary policies entice illegal aliens and human smugglers to violate America’s borders, leading to the tragedy in South Texas where ten migrants died in a semi-trailer truck last week.

Smugglers affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas are accused of escorting dozens of illegal immigrants across the Rio Grande and packing them into a trailer that would become a deadly mobile oven as it traveled 200 miles from Laredo to San Antonio. When the truck stopped at a local Wal-Mart, 30 survivors jumped out and ran to a half-dozen waiting SUVs.

Though San Antonio is not an officially declared sanctuary city, Mayor Ron Nirenberg and a majority of the council support the police department’s widely known policy of not informing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of suspected illegal aliens.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said such policies are a magnet for illegality. “Sanctuary cities entice people to believe they can come to America and Texas and live outside the law. Sanctuary cities also enable human smugglers and cartels,” Patrick said. “We need a secure border and legal immigration reform so we can control who enters our country.”

Not so, say immigration activists, who immediately blasted the cops for contacting ICE this time. “Instead of offering a humanitarian response, SAPD called an enforcement agency with its own track record of causing migrant deaths and criminalizing, detaining and deporting vulnerable populations,” said the local Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES).

It’s beyond absurd to second-guess the police in such a case. The Department of Homeland Security is the lead investigative agency for all smuggling cases, and its ICE agency quickly brought federal charges against the semi-truck driver, with a widening probe into the broader human-trafficking network. Local constabularies have neither the tools nor the authority to pursue such matters.

RAICES’s kneejerk reaction only serves to protect death-dealing smugglers who profit at the expense of human life.