BY MARC A. THIESSEN The Washington Post<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON<\/strong><\/p>\n It is mystifying why Democrats are so up in arms about President Trump\u2019s declaration that he is considering releasing illegal immigrants into so-called \u201csanctuary cities.\u201d After all, Trump\u2019s plan simply follows the Democrats\u2019 own policy prescriptions for dealing with illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n First, Democrats support releasing illegal immigrants into U.S. communities. Just a few months ago, during the negotiations to end the government shutdown, Democrats sought to limit the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention \u201cbeds available for interior enforcement\u201d to about 16,500 per day, and to reduce the overall number of available beds to less than 36,000. In January, ICE was holding 48,088 illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n When Homeland Security officials warned this could force the release of thousands illegal immigrants, Democrats openly declared it was their goal to do precisely that. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, said the goal of capping the beds was to \u201cforce the Trump administration to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n Many other leading Democrats \u2014 including presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., \u2014 have gone further, proposing to abolish ICE altogether. In 2013, when she was House minority leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., \u2014 now the House speaker \u2014 called for an end to deportations for illegal immigrants who have not committed felonies, declaring \u201cOur view of the law is that if somebody is here without sufficient documentation, that is not reason for deportation.\u201d Some Democrats, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and presidential candidate and former San Antonio mayor Juli\u00e1n Castro, have gone so far as to propose decriminalizing illegal border crossings entirely. \u201cThe truth is, immigrants seeking refuge in our country … shouldn\u2019t be a criminal-justice issue,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n So, Democrats have been pretty clear \u2014 they want illegal immigrants released and allowed to live in the United States.<\/p>\n Where should they live? Well, it was Democrats who created \u201csanctuary cities\u201d as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. If they want illegal immigrants released, why would they oppose having President Trump release them into the very sanctuaries they<\/em> created for that express purpose?<\/p>\n Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed in his 2019 inaugural address to make the entire state of California a \u201csanctuary to all who seek it,\u201d and on his first day in office, he proposed making illegal immigrants eligible for Medi-Cal, the state\u2019s version of Medicaid, until age 26. Some sanctuary cities are even allowing illegal immigrants to vote in local elections. In 2016, San Francisco passed Proposition N, which allows illegal immigrants to vote in school board elections. And in 2017, College Park, Md., became the largest U.S. city to allow illegal immigrants to vote in municipal elections.<\/p>\n Sorry, Democrats, you don\u2019t get to have it both ways. You can\u2019t on one hand try to force Trump to release illegal immigrants, create sanctuaries for them and arrange local laws to encourage illegal immigrants to come to those sanctuaries, and then simultaneously be outraged that Trump wants to do exactly what you have said should be done with those who cross our borders illegally.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s plan likely won\u2019t ever come to fruition, but the president is effectively calling out Democrats for their hypocrisy. There was a time when many Democrats believed, as Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a 2009 speech, that \u201cIllegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple.\u201d No longer. If Democrats won\u2019t help the president secure the border, then there\u2019s nothing outrageous about making them live with the consequences of the policies they advocate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trump is right to call out Democrats on sanctuary cities BY MARC A. THIESSEN The Washington Post WASHINGTON It is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[362],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1111926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111927,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111926\/revisions\/1111927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1111926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1111926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1111926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}