California’s grossly unconstitutional obstruction of federal immigration laws is feeding a growing backlash by local governments against the state’s unprecedented sanctuary laws that shield its 2.4 million illegal aliens from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE).
There is a “little bit of a revolution going on in California” over “sanctuary cities,” President Trump told reporters yesterday in Key West, Fla.
“Drugs are flowing into our country,” he said. “We need border protection. We need the wall. We have to have the wall. The Democrats don’t want to approve the wall because they think [opposing it is] good politically, but it’s not.” He added that human trafficking is “worse than it’s ever been in the history of the world.”
“If you look at what’s happening in California with sanctuary cities — people are really going the opposite way,” Trump continued. “They don’t want sanctuary cities. There’s a little bit of a revolution going on in California.”
This righteous, patriotic blowback is taking the form of Golden State localities opting out of the state laws, and in some cases, joining the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California’s months-old “sanctuary state” laws that punish compliance with federal immigration laws and provide legal cover for corrupt officials to continue brazenly flouting immigration laws and interfering with federal agents trying to enforce them.
In a big symbolic win for the rule of law, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 1 this week to support the lawsuit. With 3.3 million residents, the county is the largest locality to back the pro-immigration law enforcement push. Within the county, Escondido’s city council voted 4 to 1 on April 4 to join the lawsuit.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously March 27 to join the lawsuit. The county has a population of around 3.2 million people.
Other local governments have taken action, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Los Alamitos (population 11,600) was the first to speak out on March 19 by opting out of the sanctuary laws. It was later joined in showing support for the Trump administration in one fashion or another by Dana Point (34,012), Aliso Viejo (51,424), Fountain Valley (56,529), Huntington Beach (200,652), Mission Viejo (200,652), Newport Beach (86,688), Orange (140,504), San Juan Capistrano (36,276), Westminster (91,565) and Yorba Linda (68,235).
In a move orchestrated by the American Civil Liberties Union and other illegal alien lobbies, residents in Los Alamitos filed a new lawsuit against their city for opting out of the sanctuary state legal regime.
“You can’t hurt people in your community so you get airtime on Fox News,” Jessica Karp Bansal, litigation director for the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) and an attorney for the plaintiffs was quoted saying.
Antsy Democrats have been slinging invective and abuse at Los Alamitos officials for weeks. California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon (D) said the move by Los Alamitos to support federal law was “a symbolic vote in favor of President Trump’s racist immigration enforcement policies.”
The deadline for participating in the federal lawsuit has now passed but localities are likely to find other ways to back the legal proceedings such as by passing resolutions endorsing it.
Paso Robles is considering becoming the first city in San Luis Obispo County to officially oppose sanctuary state laws after residents complained they were “under attack” and facing an “illegal alien invasion,” reports the San Luis Obispo Tribune.
“We live in a beautiful town, a beautiful place, and we want to keep it that way,” local resident Linda Becker told city council. “Sanctuary cities are disrespectful to the rule of law.”
The federal lawsuit specifically targets three statutes curbing the power of California’s state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of immigration authorities, and punish employers for cooperating with those authorities. The laws also impose draconian restrictions on communication between local police and federal immigration enforcement, including information regarding when criminal aliens are scheduled to be released from local jails.
Under the longstanding doctrine in American constitutional law known as “dual sovereignty,” states cannot be compelled to enforce federal immigration laws, but they are obliged not to hinder their enforcement. The so-called sanctuary cities that form the bulk of the sanctuary movement really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States, just like the slave states that seceded from the Union before the Civil War.
The sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement and characterizing it as somehow racist. Some left-wingers use the dreadful euphemism “civil liberties safe zones” to describe sanctuary jurisdictions. The phrase deliberately blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.
The U.S. Border Patrol is reportedly fighting back against California’s openly seditious statewide sanctuary laws by refusing to hand over illegal aliens with felony warrants to police in California, as previously reported.
Federal prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdictions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-January.
With luck, federal prosecutors will soon do less considering, and more charging and indicting.
This article by Matthew Vadum first appeared April 20, 2018, at FrontPageMag.