Lawless sanctuary cities: Compassion does not trump logic
rom a moral, economic and legal perspective, the reality of sanctuary cities must be resisted. One has only to refer to the chart below to understand the unsustainability of open borders. In every functional way, sanctuary cities work hand in hand with the cartels that have pushed at least 8 million border jumpers into our country. Biden has pushed another 2-to-3 million on us through various other means. At the heart of the sanctuary city (SC) issue are three competing concepts:
A. Self-declared sanctuary cities claim a higher moral ground in asserting that all have the right to the American dream and that elected officials have the right to force action on Americans without a vote.
B. Such cities force their citizens to pay for illegals through higher taxes and reduced services, not only in the cities and states they reside in but across America. The federal government and its funded and controlled NGOs have become the bagmen of the cartels, dispensing billions with few, if any, controls.
C. SCs operate in a legal no man’s land that looks like they conspire to actively, not passively, evade federal law on multiple levels.
There are specific federal statutes that require state and local officials to aid federal immigration authorities; Section 1373(a) of Title 8 of the U.S. Code states state and local governments can’t ban officials from sending or receiving information regarding immigration or citizenship status of people to the Department of Homeland Security.
The underlying safe harbor SCs rely on to avoid being prosecuted for either harboring a fugitive or obstructing justice is the cities’ false claim that they are passively resisting; this is the lie that should allow the Trump Justice Department to pierce this bit of legerdemain. There are too many documented cases of judges who have walked illegals out the backdoor of their courtroom or jailers, with ICE agents in the lobby, allowing prisoners to disappear into the night to believe for one moment that the resistance is passive.
In some cases, city councils and state officials have tried to make this conduct appear legal under the auspices of home rule. No matter how you look at it, all these various officials have blood on their hands as they facilitate a state of lawlessness within their jurisdictions. All the other nonsense with zero bail and redefining down what a felony is just more of the same. At the end of the day, you either support law and order or you support anarchy. Sanctuary cities support anarchy.
One of the arguments made by SCs is that since they don’t collect immigration status for people they arrest, then it cannot be held against them if they don’t comply with federal law. The idea of willful ignorance or “I see nothing” seems to be the motto of too many blue cities. As one local politician said to me, “Heck, if I don’t keep immigration status records, I can’t be blamed by the Feds.” He actually thought that was quite clever; I was just so amazed that he did not understand the ramifications of what he was implying!
Another excuse you will hear is that under federalism and the 10th Amendment, state and local governments cannot be compelled to enforce federal law without compensation. In essence, they claim they can nullify federal law – false! The last time I looked, the government was sending unfunded mandates to states by the truckload, another specious excuse that does not hold water. States receive enormous funding for everything you can think of as long as they comply with federal mandates. Somehow, SCs seem to believe they have a carve-out that insulates them from the usual norms.
Why do sanctuary cities invite millions of illegal aliens who require an average of $65,000 each for annual support in some jurisdictions? Is this a mandate from their citizens? Research shows that when citizens find out that illegal immigrants are eating out of their rice bowl, their attitudes change remarkably fast. The usual answer, the politically correct answer, is “compassion.” One thing I’ve never associated with government is compassion.
Following the monthly Department of Labor jobs reports, it becomes clear that government hiring started in earnest with Joe Biden’s inauguration and hasn’t slowed since; this hiring binge is across the board at the federal, state, and local level. But wait, there’s more. An estimated 500,000 to 1 million non-government employees are carrying out the care, feeding, education, housing, medical care, smokes, snacks, legal and even laundry of illegals. No one knows because it is not tracked. But tens of thousands of hotel employees, food kitchens, legal aid providers, translators and many more have created a massive industry that supports this craziness. Please don’t kid yourself; most do it for the money and don’t want their gig to end!
When you talk about government power, the No. 1 metric is the number of mouths beholden to one or more government officials that derive their power from their headcount. When did you last hear of mass government or private contractor layoffs? For all intents and purposes, it never happens.
Historians will look back and view the sanctuary city era as another aberration that was supposed to “signal” to anyone watching that compassion trumps logic. The American public has been taken on a ride costing hundreds of billions of dollars to date and has seen our cities turned into cesspools of violence and lawlessness. I hope the Trump administration will use the power of the Justice Department to hasten its demise and send a clear message that the rule of law and sanity is returning to our country.