The folly of sanctuary cities

OPINION:

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went on “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel and told host Sean Hannity that it’s impossible to have law and order in any jurisdiction that’s also a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.

He’s 100 percent correct.

The problem with sanctuary cities is they draw the illegal and criminal elements simply with their announced label. Think about it. If you’re a criminal, where would you rather live — in a community with law enforcement who are known to work with ICE and detain so that feds can deport — or in a place where the leading politicians say come, welcome, you are welcome here, and police will do you no harm.

It’s a no-brainer.

The folly of sanctuary cities isn’t just that they offer a haven for illegals. It’s also that they advertise themselves as a haven for illegals, so more and more come, particularly of the criminal kind.

“Tom Homan going to Minnesota is good to turn down the temperature,” the Republican senator said, as Breitbart noted. “But you know what is unreasonable is to have sanctuary city policies in 12 states that entice people to come to our country to avoid enforcing federal law, to increase crime, to incentivize fraud. … All the 12 states … doing this will be punished if they don’t change. You can never have law and order [and] sanctuary city policy.”

Graham called on his fellow senators to hold a vote on “what President Trump said he would do — end sanctuary city policy forever” — and indeed, this would be a smart action because it would put on record where each and every member of the Senate stands on sanctuary policy. The House should do similarly.

The American citizens should be given a clear vision of where their representatives and senators stand on sanctuary cities. For or against; yay or nay. No equivocating. No bloviating. No excusing and justifying and politicking. A simple yes or no will suffice. 

It’s likely to be a partisan vote; we all know Democrats are the ones who fall on the side of defending illegal immigrants, even if it means tossing citizens under the bus. After all, Democrats aren’t concerned about the ICE agents who’ve been hit, struck, bitten — even losing a finger — or otherwise attacked and physically assaulted and injured so much as they are concerned about the First Amendment rights of the protesters, who are actually insurrectionists and who are actually impeding law enforcement officials from doing their lawful duties and therefore, who are actually lawbreakers, and who, by the way, aren’t really exercising a First Amendment right to petition and protest because they’re not doing it peaceably, as the First Amendment requires.

We all know Democrats have been enabling and emboldening and even encouraging these violent uprisings against ICE because the chaos in the streets serves the interests of the leftists in the Democrat Party by a) distracting President Donald Trump from his MAGA agenda while undercutting his border controls and b) using the mayhem in the streets to fuel the Democrat lovers in the media to deceptively narrate the failures of this administration’s policies. So we all know it’s the Democrats who are to blame. 

But a vote would be great just the same.

If there’s one thing Democrats detest more than Trump, it’s accountability.

And heading into the midterms, nothing says “Vote Republican” like mailers with the names and photos of the victims of criminal illegals alongside the names and photos of the Democrats who voted against legislation banning sanctuary communities. Maybe the messaging even goes something like this: “They built that” — a sort of play on former President Barack Obama’s famously socialist slam at free market America, when he told business owners, “You didn’t build that.”

It’s simple and common sense. If politicians in charge of protecting the communities they serve send out calls far and wide that illegals would not be detained or arrested or deported within their jurisdictions, then it’s only common sense, even for the simple-minded, that the illegals would come, and that the criminal illegals especially would come.

American citizens have a right to expect the politicians they pay to protect and serve actually do protect and serve — and not the ones who aren’t supposed to be here anyway. If those who can’t get on board with America First, they ought to at least support Citizens First. And sanctuary policies fly in the face of putting citizens first.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.