The Trump administration launched a long overdue legal assault this week on grotesquely unconstitutional new state laws in California that punish compliance with federal immigration laws and provide legal cover for state and local officials to continue brazenly flouting immigration laws and obstructing federal agents trying to enforce them.
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. 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.
“Immigration law “is the province of the federal government” and while there may be “a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration,” the law is on “the books and its purpose is clear,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told law enforcement officers attending the California Peace Officers Association’s 26th Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day on Wednesday in the state capital of Sacramento.