Sanctuary City Politicians May Be Prosecuted

Federal prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in so-called sanctuary cities, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told lawmakers at a hearing dominated by Democrats hectoring her over whether President Trump used profanity during a closed-door negotiating session about immigration reform. Jailing the leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions is long overdue.

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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 blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S. These sanctuary cities really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States. They may as well be flying the Confederate battle flag at city hall in their modern-day campaign of massive resistance against federal immigration authorities. Nielsen’s comments came in response to a question from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday. Harris noted that Thomas D. Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within DHS, told Fox News on Jan. 4 this year that the U.S. Department of Justice had been asked to “look into criminal charges for elected officials with sanctuary policies as they are harboring illegal aliens.” “I believe the request was made,” Nielsen said. "The Department of Justice is reviewing what avenues might be available.” “The context of this is of course not only putting my ICE officers at risk but also finding an efficient and effective way to enforce our immigration laws,” Nielsen said.

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Harris’s home state of California may become ground zero in the battle over enforcement of the nation’s long-neglected immigration laws. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed “sanctuary state” legislation Oct. 5, dramatically curtailing the power of state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of federal immigration authorities. The law, which took effect New Year’s Day in the state that is home to more than 2 million illegal aliens, has been attacked as “unconscionable” by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is trying to block federal crime-fighting grants from flowing to sanctuary jurisdictions. The Trump administration is gearing up to hit California with a series of major immigration raids to reinforce the primacy of federal immigration law, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

U.S. immigration officials have begun preparing for a major sweep in San Francisco and other Northern California cities in which federal officers would look to arrest more than 1,500 undocumented people while sending a message that immigration policy will be enforced in the sanctuary state, according to a source familiar with the operation. […] The campaign, centered in the Bay Area, could happen within weeks, and is expected to become the biggest enforcement action of its kind under President Trump, said the source, who requested anonymity because the plans have not been made public.

The operation will focus on individuals who have been ordered deported and those with criminal backgrounds, the newspaper reports. ICE’s Homan previously warned that “California better hold on tight.” If local politicians “don’t want to protect their communities, then ICE will.” The hearing came as a new DHS report concluded that “U.S. federal courts convicted at least 549 people with international terrorism-related charges between Sept. 11, 2001 and Dec. 31, 2016,” according to CBS News. “Seventy-three percent of them were foreign-born, and 148 of those convicted had become naturalized U.S. citizens.”

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Apart from Harris, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee weren’t too interested in what the Trump administration planned to do in sanctuary cities. They preferred to spend most of the hearing browbeating and bullying Secretary Nielsen over naughty words President Trump may have used in a meeting with lawmakers last Thursday over potential immigration reforms. A suspect Washington Post report based on unidentified sources claimed Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and nations in Africa as “shithole countries.” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). who attended the sit-down and has a track record of lying about Republicans, claims Trump used the language and that it somehow constitutes proof that the president is a racist. Trump, Sens. David Perdue (R-Ga.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) strenuously deny Trump used the vulgarism. At the hearing, Nielsen, who also attended the White House meeting, also denied Trump said it, saying she didn’t remember the phrase being used at the meeting.

The conversation was very impassioned. I don’t dispute that the president was using tough language. Others in the room were also using tough language. The concept, and the context, I believe, in which this came up was the concept that the president would like to move to a merit-based system.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) cut her off. “Did he use what would be considered vulgar language referring to certain countries?” “The president used tough language in general, as did congressmen in the room, yes sir,” Nielsen replied. Ranting, his eyes bulging like a madman’s, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) tried to raise money for his 2020 presidential campaign by tearing into Nielsen, claiming the real America was on the verge of resembling the fictional semi-apartheid America described in the typical Southern Poverty Law Center fundraising letter. “Your silence and your amnesia is complicity,” Booker told her after blathering on about a supposed increase in white-supremacist violence in the country that has so far been invisible to criminologists. This is a preview of Democrats’ 2018 campaign platform. They can’t accept that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton so they plan to keep tearing the country apart over race. Eight years of Barack Obama’s race-baiting and polarizing wasn’t enough, as they see it.

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