Nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide.
I think it's safe to say, as many have concluded, that what Donald Trump received when he won so handily against the Democrat Party was a mandate. That mandate was to fix our economy, lower crime, expand opportunity, and get these illegal aliens out of here while locking up the border tightly.
According to the Census Bureau, there are an estimated 11 million illegal aliens currently in our country, with "estimated" being the key word here. The actual number is probably far larger.
This number doesn't please anyone except Democrats, and the only reason they love such a huge illegal population is because it allows them to do several things. If they don't require ID for voting, they can use this population as a voting pool. Secondly, it allows the left to do their favorite thing in the world: virtue signal.
On the topic of immigration, there is no greater virtue signal for the left than claiming their city is a "sanctuary city," or a place where the Democrats will refuse outright to work with or assist federal agents in rounding up illegal immigrants. In their mind, it makes them look heroic, brave, and best of all, not racist. They can wave that fact in the air in front of their Democrat voters for clout, and receive pats on the back from their Democrat colleagues.
But the thing about signaling virtues is that, at some point, you're going to have to back up your talk. Your virtue will be tested, and another fun thing about the left is that when their virtues are tested, they often crack and crumble under the weight.
And the time for testing is at hand.
You've probably seen the drama being created by Denver, Colorado mayor Mike Johnston, a man who couldn't wait to announce that he would be protecting illegal immigrants in his "sanctuary city." He even went so far as to threaten a "Tiananmen Square Moment" should Trump's federal government attempt to deport the illegal aliens in his city.
To which incoming Senate Homeland Security Committee chair Rand Paul responded with the equivalent of Doc Holiday in "Tombstone" with "say when":
“The mayor of Denver, if he’s going to resist federal law, which is a long-standing history of the supremacy of federal law, if he’s going to resist that, it will go all the way to the Supreme Court,” he continued.
“I would suspect that he would be removed from office. I don’t know whether or not there’d be a criminal prosecution for someone resisting federal law, but he will lose," Paul warned. "People need to realize that what he is offering is a form of insurrection where the states resist the federal government.”
My colleague Rusty Weiss posted that federal law that shows that the Denver mayor is out of his jurisdiction with this claim, and I'll repost it for you here. Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Which brings us to the conclusion that, under this administration, the sanctuary city is dead.
But this message isn't going to sink in unless an example is made. Mayor Johnston has, in my opinion, volunteered himself to be just that example, and Trump and Paul should take him up on the offer.
There should be such overwhelming force that other city and state leaders get the message. Johnston should be pushed to the point where he either is removed from office (I doubt this will happen, as few leftists actually live up to their virtues) or he is embarrassingly and very publicly forced to bend the knee and allow the roundup to happen with his angry blessing.
This would, naturally, have one of two effects. The first is that the other blue cities see what happened to Johnston and they quietly step aside and allow the process of collection and deportation to happen unabated, or some leftist whose ideology is so ingrained that they forego common sense causes them to lash out, and they are summarily dealt with in the court of law, further reinforcing the law of the land.
But it starts with Johnston. He can be used to make it clear that there are no sanctuary cities. There's no legal ground for them, and standing in the way of the federal government isn't an option. The moment we get that message across, the better it will be for this country.
