South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is bringing illegal aliens out of the shadows while keeping his city’s taxpayers in the dark.
Following the lead of New York and Los Angeles, Buttigieg created a “Community Resident Card” that enables illegal aliens to access city services. The “SB ID” is officially recognized by local law enforcement, schools, the water utility, libraries and other municipal agencies, per the mayor’s executive order.
But there’s a key difference: Buttigieg’s program is a private venture. (Wink, wink.)
Seeking information on SB ID, Judicial Watch of Washington, D.C., filed repeated public-records requests to ascertain its costs and operation. The city refused to provide any information, saying that SB ID is administered by a third party, La Casa de Amistad. (La Casa isn’t divulging details either.)
Buttigieg doesn’t talk about SB ID on the campaign trail, and he dodges questions about South Bend as a sanctuary city. “I don’t know. I regard us as a welcoming city,” he avers, adding that his police force doesn’t enforce immigration laws.
“Doing this kind of [ID] program privately comes with a prominent benefit — confidentiality,” Jackie Vimo, a policy analyst at the National Immigration Law Center, told NBC News. “The best way to make sure sensitive data isn’t shared is to make sure that you don’t have any sensitive data to share.”
Judicial Watch filed suit to obtain email communications among Buttigieg, his staff members and La Casa officials. Ultimately, the courts will determine if Buttigieg & Co. conspired to break Indiana’s public-records laws.
Whichever way the courts see it, the optics aren’t good for Buttigieg when SB ID shields the identity of illegal aliens, even as it opens the door to taxpayer-funded services.
Speaking of transparency – or lack of it — the city’s housing authority is under FBI investigation. It is noteworthy that as the mayor caters to a reputed 4,500 illegal aliens in South Bend, legal residents there have long complained of mismanagement and misuse of federal funds at the city’s rundown projects.
Ever eager to move other people’s money around, Buttigieg suggested during a presidential debate that illegal aliens should be eligible for federal health insurance benefits. Such talk is, to say the least, disturbing from a presidential candidate who seems comfortable trampling his constituents’ right to know what his administration is up to, even as he aids foreign nationals in breaking our immigration laws.