Must Cities Enforce the Law?
Cities
around America are saying no—and leading the country toward a second civil war.
On July 1, 2015, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez fired a
stolen gun on a pier in San Francisco, California. The bullet hit a young woman
who was walking arm-in-arm with her father. “Help me, Dad,” she said. Two hours
later, in a local hospital, she died.
Her killer, authorities soon
discovered, was an illegal immigrant who had been convicted of seven felonies
and deported five times.
After illegally entering the United
States for the sixth time, Lopez-Sanchez had been arrested and incarcerated in
a federal prison. As the date neared for him to be turned over to federal Immigration
and Customs Enforcement officers, however, prison officials decided
to move him to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department on an outstanding
drug-related warrant. The San Francisco district attorney’s office refused to
prosecute Lopez-Sanchez for a decade-old marijuana possession case, and instead
released him back onto California’s streets on April 15, 2015.
He shot Kathryn Steinle with a gun
stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management vehicle 77 days after his release.
Steinle’s death elicited a public
outcry against “sanctuary” cities like San Francisco that refuse to cooperate
with federal immigration officials to deport people who enter the U.S.
illegally and are wanted by federal authorities. In fact, in the three weeks
after Steinle was killed, Republican support for presidential candidate Donald
Trump jumped from 15 to 28 percent. Trump’s campaign pledge to actually enforce
existing U.S. immigration law resonated with millions of Americans who were fed
up with politicians downplaying out-of-control illegal immigration and its
deadly results.
In the presidential election, 63
million Americans ended up voting for the candidate who promised to faithfully
enforce the immigration laws passed by Congress, in contrast to his
predecessor. But now that President Trump has begun to take action against
illegal immigration, the spotlight is on more than 650 cities, counties and
municipalities that have their own statutes that directly oppose federal (and
sometimes even state) law.
These local governments uphold
sanctuary laws that forbid local officials from assisting
federal agents who are enforcing U.S. immigration law.
This is one trend among many others
showing that America is more ideologically and politically divided now than at
any time since the Civil War.
It is hard to know how this situation
will unfold, but this much is certain: A fight is brewing between the Trump
administration and a coalition of Democratic Party officials over whether or
not sanctuary jurisdiction will allow U.S. immigration law to be enforced. The Trumpet
can say with certainty that this division will get much deeper, based on a
biblical forecast that is 3,500 years old.
Sanctuary
Jurisdictions
From 1990 to 2014, the number of
unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. tripled from 3.5 million to 11.7 million,
meaning illegal immigrants now account for about 3.5 percent of the nation’s
population. Because these illegal immigrants aren’t vetted before
entering the country, a disproportionate number of violent criminals have mixed
in among these waves of hard-working individuals and families seeking a better
life.
This is why illegal immigrants commit
murder at roughly three times the rate of U.S. residents in general. According
to the Government Accountability Office, “criminal aliens” were incarcerated
for 25,064 homicides between 2003 and 2010. This figure includes murders
committed by all noncitizens, not just illegal immigrants, but it shows that
noncitizens—8 percent of the population—commit 22 percent of the murders.
Despite such alarming facts, at least
five states, 633 counties and 39 cities limit the extent that local officials
can assist federal immigration agents. Between January 2014 and September 2015,
sanctuary jurisdictions refused over 17,000 requests from U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement to detain an individual for 48 hours after
their release date in order to give federal officials time to put them into the
federal deportation system.
Nearly 12,000 (70 percent) of these
rejected requests were issued for illegal aliens with a criminal record.
This means sanctuary jurisdictions
are releasing nearly 600 illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds each month.
In an attempt to end this practice
and to enforce federal immigration laws, President Trump issued an executive
order on January 25, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United
States.” “Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate
federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United
States,” this order states. “These jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm
to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic. … The purpose of
this order is to direct executive departments and agencies to employ all lawful
means to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.”
Since constitutional law forbids the
president from federalizing local police departments or compelling states to
enforce federal laws at their own expense, Congress usually encourages local
governments to assist in the enforcement of federal acts by giving out grants
of money. President Trump’s executive order threatens to strip sanctuary
jurisdictions of such federal funding if they continue refusing to assist
immigration agents.
The American Transparency
Organization found that the federal government gives 106 sanctuary cities
nearly $27 billion in funding. Yet much of this funding does not explicitly
state that it is available only if these cities comply with federal immigration
laws. So unless Congress changes each federal grant to include such a
precondition, it is highly unlikely the judiciary will allow President Trump to
cut off all $27 billion in funding to sanctuary jurisdictions.
However, if the Trump administration
can make a convincing legal case that these funds are not being used according
to their intended purpose, the federal government could strip these
jurisdictions of at least millions of dollars.
New Nullification
Crisis
Now that Republicans hold the
presidency, along with both houses of Congress and 31 state governorships,
cities are the only major layer of government that Democrats still control. Yet
Democratic politicians still hold a lot of power, because 2 out of 3 Americans
live in cities. The mayors of 37 major American cities have pledged that they
will steadfastly remain sanctuary cities in spite of the president’s threat to
withhold federal funding.
President Trump and these mayors are
currently engaging in a high-stakes game of chicken. If Congress supports the
president’s pledge to cut funding to sanctuary jurisdictions and the mayors
still refuse to comply, America will experience a new nullification crisis.
The original nullification crisis
erupted in 1832 during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, whose portrait now
hangs on the wall of President Trump’s newly decorated Oval Office. South
Carolina declared certain federal tariffs to be unconstitutional, and the state
stopped enforcing these tariffs. To stave off a constitutional crisis, Congress
passed two measures: a compromise tariff to assuage South Carolinians, and an
act authorizing President Jackson to use military force if the state didn’t
accept the compromise. South Carolina accepted the compromise tariff. But it
wasn’t until after the brutal Civil War that every state accepted that federal
courts have the final say in determining which acts of Congress violate the
U.S. Constitution.
If local jurisdictions were able to
nullify federal immigration law, then anyone could enter the United States.
That is why the Constitution vests the power to determine immigration policies
with Congress, not states, municipalities or universities. So while it is true
that the president cannot force sanctuary jurisdictions to cooperate with
federal immigration agents if they are willing to endure certain funding cuts, Congress
can pass an act requiring local police agencies to report illegal aliens with
criminal backgrounds to federal immigration officials.
This is a legal truth that sanctuary
jurisdictions must accept if a constitutional crisis is to be averted.
Send in the Feds
If sanctuary jurisdictions continue
to refuse assistance to immigration agents, President Trump will either have to
give up on his campaign pledge to enforce America’s immigration laws, or he
will have to enforce these laws using only federal officials. The second option
would mean a massive expansion of federal police power.
The number of federal officers with
arrest-and-firearm authority has nearly tripled from less than 75,000 in 1996
to more than 200,000 in 2016. The number of nonmilitary federal officers
authorized to make arrests and carry firearms now exceeds the number of U.S.
Marines. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been the
primary architects of this expansion of federal power, but President Trump’s
executive order will add another 5,000 border patrol agents and 10,000 Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agents to the ever growing list.
Besides promising to enforce U.S.
immigration laws, President Trump also pledged to restore “law and
order“ to America’s cities. In his first week in office, he
expressed his willingness to use federal police power to honor this pledge,
posting on social media that he would “send in the feds” to Chicago if the city
didn’t fix the “horrible carnage going on.”
Exactly what the president meant by
“send in the feds” is still a matter of debate. His two likeliest options would
be to either embed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents within local police
departments or to send in the National Guard until order is restored. While the
second option is certainly the more extreme move, former Presidents Dwight D.
Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson set precedents for such actions.
In 1957, President Eisenhower invoked
the Insurrection Act of 1807 to authorize military intervention in Little Rock,
Arkansas, after a riot broke out against federal efforts to desegregate the
Arkansas school system. In 1967, President Johnson invoked the same act,
sending in soldiers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to put down a
violent race riot in Detroit. While Johnson collaborated with Gov. George
Romney of Michigan, Eisenhower circumvented state authority to quell the civil
unrest.
As murder rates surge in America’s
largest cities and race riots become more common (see sidebar), President Trump is going to face
some difficult decisions about how to enforce the law in a nation where city
mayors obstruct justice and encourage lawlessness. Meanwhile, on the streets, a
segment of American society is digging in and making itself “ungovernable” in
protest against the president. Anger and bitterness are running high and, at
times, erupting in violence.
The situation is leading to a civil war.
For years, the Western Hemisphere has been plagued by
violent Latin American cartels that move dangerous drugs northward into the
United States in return for cash profits and military-style weapons. One
primary reason these cartels have been successful is that Americans have spent
about a trillion dollars on illegal drugs in the past decade. The cartels
infiltrating America are financed by U.S. drug users and supported by U.S.
gangs of fatherless youth.
Now is the time for every American to ask what might we be doing to have brought such
chastisement upon ourselves. This is not merely a speculative religious
hypothesis or a debatable theological introspection. It is something we did as
a nation when we faced our first civil war. During that war, President Abraham
Lincoln wrote: “The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims
to act in accordance with the will of God.
America’s Murder
Rate
America’s murder rate is rising faster than at any time in
the past 45 years. According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigations,
15,696 murders were committed during 2015. This means the nationwide homicide
count rose by 10.8 percent, the biggest year-to-year percentage jump since
1971.
For 2016, the Economist
gathered data for 50 of America’s most violent cities and found that homicide
rates rose in 34 of them. These 50 metropolitan areas contain 15 percent of the
country’s population, yet account for 36 percent of the country’s murder
victims. The Major Cities Chiefs Association (mcca)
estimated that the homicide count increased by double-digit percentages in 61
American cities last year. Since the majority of murders in America take place
in big cities, this indicates that the nationwide murder rate almost certainly
increased substantially again last year.
“We’ve had at least two years running
now where there’s been an increase in 35 to 45 major cities,” mcca executive director Darrel Stephens told Time magazine.
“It’s a major issue and should be in the cities where it’s taking place”
(January 30).
Total violent crime—including murder,
rape, robbery and aggravated assault—increased from 1,153,022 reported
incidents in 2014 to 1,197,704 reported incidents in 2015, the biggest spike
since 1992.
Stephens cited gang violence,
drug-related violence and the easy availability of firearms as root causes
behind the spike in homicides. Meanwhile, American political commentator
Heather MacDonald, author of The War on Cops, argues that this
recent surge of murders is a result of the “Ferguson effect”—police officers in
minority neighborhoods backing off from interacting with residents when not
absolutely necessary because of public hostility in the wake of the Michael
Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.
digs deeper and blames government entitlement programs for making his fellow
black Americans in inner cities dependent on the state, fueling a breakdown of
nuclear families that exacerbates criminal behavior. While 1 in 3 American
children is raised without a father, this figure goes up to approximately 1 in
2 or more in some big cities. Approximately 85 percent of youths in prison come
from fatherless homes.
The family, the foundation of any
stable society, is under attack in America. As long as this continues, American
society will continue to produce criminals at a record rate. One reason violent
crime had been decreasing until just recently is that America’s prison
population has quintupled since 1970. Almost 700 out of every 100,000 Americans
sit in the nation’s prisons and jails—a higher rate than any other country in
the world.
President Donald Trump has promised
to “make America safe again” by declaring a federal war on crime. Until the
root cause behind America’s crime epidemic is fixed, however, the nation will
continue to struggle with violence. Five months before the United States
Constitution was signed, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “[O]nly a virtuous people are
capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need
of masters.” When people are out of control, when the sense of personal
responsibility and morality degenerates, freedom diminishes, and people are
forced to either live in a police state or in anarchy.
Yours for
better living,
Bruce, the Poor Man
A Final Note…
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