President Donald Trump delayed immigration enforcement actions set to begin over the weekend, saying he will give Congress two weeks to fix loophole-ridden asylum laws before ramping up deportations in America’s largest cities.
With chances of congressional action rated somewhere between slim and none, defiant sanctuary city officials say they are more determined than ever to freeze out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“[The Chicago Police Department] will not cooperate with or facilitate any ICE enforcement,” declared newly elected Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “I have directed and Superintendent [Eddie] Johnson has confirmed that CPD has terminated ICE’s access to CPD’s databases related to federal immigration enforcement activities.”
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti, said his city “will always stand with our immigrant brothers and sisters, and our law enforcement officers will never participate in these actions. No Angeleno [sic]should ever have to fear being snatched from their home or separated from their loved ones, and we are doing everything we can to provide immigrant families with the information and support.”
The Office of Immigrant Affairs in New York tweeted a link informing migrants of their “rights,” and in Houston the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (a state with an anti-sanctuary law) advised illegal aliens not to answer if ICE agents come knocking.
“That would be one of the biggest mistakes one could make. Opening the door allows the agent to pursue the person they’re seeking and both question anyone in the house and search anything in the house,” counseled senior staff attorney Edgar Saldivar.
While doing nothing to stanch the surge of illegal crossings at the southern border, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined in the political grandstanding, decrying ICE enforcement as “brutal action which will tear families apart and inject terror into our communities.”
In fact, the Obama administration carried out just such actions against illegal alien families in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina in late 2016. Since then, deportations have slipped, and 100 percent of migrant family units crossing the border are being released daily into the U.S.
Pelosi’s rhetoric aside, Congress designed immigration law with assistance from state and local law enforcement in mind. As FAIR has detailed, local and state cooperation with federal immigration authorities promotes public safety, is essential to thwarting national security threats and saves taxpayers money.
Obstructionist politicians achieve none of the above.
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The corrupt politicians who run these sanctuary cities know exactly what they’re doing. To stay in power, they need the help of illegal alien voters. If citizens with proper voter ID were the only ones casting ballots, these politicians could well see their political careers dried up — or, at least, considerably shortened.
I can’t restate this often enough: The political Left needs a continuing inflow of lower-class, low-skilled, less-educated people to prop up its voter base. When they find that they can’t achieve this through lawful means, they resort to underhanded methods — e.g., illegal alien voting and sanctuary cities — all the while trying to keep us distracted with things like “climate change,” “income inequality,” and the “Green New Deal.”
The left, which seems to cover almost all of the Democratic party now, A) doesn’t want anyone detained even for a day, and B) don’t want anyone in the country deported.
As Shakespeare wrote, a rose by any other name will still smell as sweet. So, A) How do we have any knowledge of who is coming in, criminals or not, and B) how is this, by any definition, NOT open borders.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and all her enablers among the media and Democrats, are doing verbal gymnastics and word parsing to explain her concentration camp comments. They claim it’s literally true because any concentration of people in one area means they are in fact concentrated there. But that could apply to summer camp. What she said and meant was obvious, that our detention centers were the same as Nazi Germany. That we are on that level. It’s a slur on this country.
“What she said and meant was obvious, that our detention centers were the same as Nazi Germany. That we are on that level. It’s a slur on this country.” Yes — and a deep insult to victims of the actual Nazi Holocaust and their descendants.