RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-a-sanctuary-for-criminals-1522793743

I was born in South Korea and raised in Japan. My family moved to the U.S. when I was a teenager and worked through the legal immigration process. It was difficult and time-consuming, but we achieved our version of the American Dream—like the millions who came before us.

Today this system is being threatened as California moves closer to becoming a sanctuary state, with local law enforcement under order to disregard federal law and protect illegal aliens. That’s why, as a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, I voted to join a federal lawsuit against Senate Bill 54, the sanctuary law Gov. Jerry Brown signed last year.

The law prohibits state and local law-enforcement officials from informing federal authorities when an illegal alien who has committed a crime is being released from custody. Instead of protecting American citizens, politicians in Sacramento have prioritized the safety of alien criminals. They are provided privileges that American citizens don’t receive—all while endangering innocent people. CONTINUE AT SITE

A caravan of more than 1,000 young Central Americans is marching through Mexico heading for the United States. This caravan is the project of Pueblo Sin Fronteras but establishment news reports provide little information on the group, whose website reveals no founder, staff, board of directors or funders.

“We are a collective of friends who decided to be in permanent solidarity with displaced peoples,” the site explains. None of the “friends” is named but “our dream is to build solidarity among peoples and turn down border walls imposed by greed.”

According to CNN, Alex Mensing is one of the “US collaborators who works for Pueblo Sin Fronteras,” but CNN did not explain that Mensing is a paralegal at the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Law Clinic. He did tell CNN that the caravaners’ goal is to seek asylum in the United States.

This has come to the attention of President Trump, who on Sunday tweeted: “Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. ‘Caravans’ coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL.”

The president took heat from Mexican secretary of foreign affairs Luis Videgaray Caso, who told CNN, “Every day Mexico and the US work together on migration throughout the region,” and “upholding human dignity and rights is not at odds with the rule of law. Happy Easter.”

In a report from the Army’s Command and Staff College detailing a tactical success during the French Counterinsurgency in Algeria, we learn the following:

In the spring of 1957, the French began construction of an elaborate barrier–the Morice Line–along 200 miles of the frontier with Tunisia. Anchored by the Mediterranean Sea in the north and the Sahara Desert in the south, it was a miracle of modern technology. Its main feature was an eight foot high electric fence through which a charge of 5,000 volts was passed. There was a 45 meter minefield on either side of it, and on the Algerian side there was a barbed wire entanglement, and then a footpath, patrolled day and night. If the fence was penetrated, an alarm was automatically activated which brought instant fire from 105 mm howitzers and attack from mobile strike forces consisting of helicopters, tanks, and airborne infantry. Some 80,000 French soldiers defended the line. During the remainder of 1957 and 1958, Tunisian-based guerrillas tried every conceivable means of breaching the wire using high tension cutters, Bangalore torpedoes, tunnels, ramps, and even assaults by entire infantry battalions. French countermeasures, however, in every case proved to be decisive. By the end of 1958 the guerrillas had lost over 6,000 men and 4,300 weapons to the deadly combination of the barrier and mobile strike forces.

This accords with the intuitive conclusion of millions of American voters: Walls work.

Billions for the Pentagon, But Not a Penny for the Wall
The pyrrhic budget victory of last week included $718 billion for defense. Republicans gave everything up and allowed funding for Planned Parenthood, midnight basketball, and God knows what else, in order to keep the Department of Defense and its contractors in style. In keeping with their Reagan-era nostalgia, the congressional GOP is acting as if it were 1988, and the Cold War is in full swing. In real terms, the budget exceeds spending at the height of the Iraq Campaign, as well as the Reagan defense buildup.

What is defense? Is it not to make Americans safe from foreign attack? To prevent foreigners from imposing their way of life upon us, through invasion or other means? To maintain the independence, peace, and prosperity of the already-existing American people? Very little of what the government does in the name of defense accomplishes these things.

Left-wingers have been throwing an extended temper tantrum across the nation after the Trump administration announced it plans to ask individuals responding to the 2020 U.S. Census if they are American citizens.

Racist. Sexist. Xenophobic. That’s what you are if you dare to believe it is perfectly reasonable in a Census questionnaire to ask respondents if they’re citizens of this country, according to Democrats.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, which administers the decennial, constitutionally required head count, said the surprisingly controversial question will be added to Census forms at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice to help identify possible violations of the Voting Rights Act, something left-wingers claim to care about.

That any sane person would be outraged at this commonsense proposal is a depressing reminder of the power of the leftist, multiculturalist indoctrination that has robbed generations of Americans of the ability to think for themselves. The Left has been trying to blur the lines between citizens and non-citizens for years and it’s clear their hard work has paid off.

Democrat office-holders from blue states could be found shrieking and hyper-ventilating on cable news programs about this supposedly nightmarish assault by President Trump on the rights and self-esteem of illegal aliens and on the left-wingers at groups like National Council of La Raza, ACLU, and NAACP that go to great lengths to help them vote illegally in elections.

These people don’t care about the U.S. Constitution or the rule of law. The only thing they care about is power, and anything that dilutes the power of U.S. citizens in order to privilege foreigners and illegal aliens is a good thing in their eyes.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on Twitter, “The census must count every person. Our Constitution demands it. Our democracy requires it. @realDonaldTrump is jeopardizing its accuracy by adding an unnecessary citizenship question. I stand with former Census directors from both parties in opposing this terrible decision.”

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.

This makes perfect sense, according to the law of unintended consequences. It is an appropriate, tactically innovative way to counter California’s ridiculous laws that seek to nullify federal immigration legislation.

Rodney Scott, the chief patrol agent in the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, previously said that the Golden State’s sanctuary laws were making normal cooperation between his agency and local law enforcement difficult.

This is because California now largely forbids cooperation with federal immigration authorities, a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. State law there now imposes 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.

According to the Daily Caller, Scott recently entered into evidence a declaration in support of the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit aimed at California’s reckless sanctuary state laws.

In the declaration Scott recounted several instances in which San Diego sector border agents determined that they could not hand over custody of a criminal alien to local law enforcement because local officials could not be trusted to return the alien to federal custody after processing by the courts.

According to the news report:

“In each instance, the Border Patrol Agent determined it was not appropriate, consistent with his or her federal responsibilities to ensure the enforcement of immigration law, to release a criminal alien to the state and local law enforcement,” Scott said in a court declaration. “This was because, although the alien was subject to removal, if released to California law enforcement, the alien would ultimately be released into the public.”

As Trump Derangement Syndrome drives the increasingly bold radical wing of the Democratic Party to flex its muscles, a proposal to abolish the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agency is well on its way to becoming part of the Democratic Party’s platform.

This leftist temper tantrum isn’t just a rejection of ICE – it is a wholesale repudiation of borders and immigration laws, that is, of the idea of the United States as a sovereign nation. It is beyond crazy.

Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union summed things up nicely on Fox News Channel yesterday:

I think it would be great if the Democrats would run on this. I think it’s honest. I have to give them credit for being honest. They believe in sanctuary cities. They don’t want to fix the immigration system. They want to give amnesty to absolutely everybody who’s here illegally.

The Democrats’ latest big, boneheaded idea is pure suicidal ideation: there are no administrative niceties in the current proposal. Left-wingers want to drive a stake through the heart of ICE, without concern for the future. They don’t care how many Kate Steinles get murdered in the future by illegal aliens. There is almost no discussion about replacing ICE, or for that matter, of enforcing immigration law at all.

While there may be plenty of Americans, even Republicans, generally sympathetic to the plight of illegal aliens, the wholesale destruction of the nation’s immigration enforcement apparatus won’t play in Peoria. Americans don’t want to erase the nation’s borders and turn the country into a sprawling, anarchic neutral zone between Canada and Mexico where anything goes.

Yet the idea of flattening ICE has gone viral on the Left in recent days after an MSNBC host asked Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a former attorney general of the newly designated sanctuary state of California, for her thoughts on ICE.

“ICE has a purpose, ICE has a role, ICE should exist,” said the future presidential candidate. “But let’s not abuse the power.”

The phrase “sanctuary cities” is warm and welcoming. Sanctuaries are safe, cozy, and sometimes therapeutic. This term is also a deceptive euphemism for something thoroughly unacceptable.

Conservatives redefined the debate on the “estate tax” when 60 Plus Association founder Jim Martin rechristened it the “Death Tax.” Likewise, those who seek law, order, and sanity in immigration should refer to “sanctuary cities” as “fugitive cities.”

Anyone who hides a wanted criminal from federal officials could be prosecuted for harboring a fugitive. According to 18 U.S. Code § 1071, it is “an offense to harbor or conceal any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued, so as to prevent the fugitive’s discovery and arrest.” Also, 8 U.S. Code § 1324 prohibits sheltering illegal aliens from authorities. Breaking these laws can cost up to five years behind bars.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) lists Boston, New Orleans, West Palm Beach, and 31 other municipalities as fugitive cities. Some 135 fugitive counties span the nation. California, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont are fugitive states. Washington, D.C. is another fugitive jurisdiction. So far, the mayors, commissioners, and governors behind this rampant anarchy suffer few if any consequences for violating these laws, in letter or at least in spirit.

If only illegal-alien maids and busboys dodged Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other authorities in fugitive locales, this would be bad enough. But lawless politicians, mainly Democrats, shield often-deadly illegal-alien criminals from federal lawmen. These liberals protect foreign lawbreakers, often with dangerous and deadly results for law-abiding American citizens.