It’s time to stop sanctuary city insanity and the only way is economics. Without a tangible disincentive, Democrats will continue to play to the ultra-leftists who run their party and instituted these sanctuaries in the first place. If Republicans take the logical and justified steps, Trump’s international and border successes on illegal immigration can be fully realized internally too.
Not three weeks in office, President Trump has already achieved startling success in stopping illegal immigration at the border. Abroad, through the threat of tariffs, he has likewise succeeded in winning promises of cooperation from Mexico and Canada: 10,000 troops going to the border in the former and an additional $1.3 billion in border funding in the latter.
The only place that Trump has not had unqualified success against illegal immigration is internally: specifically in sanctuary cities. Here, elitist Democrat grandstanding is standing in law enforcement’s way.
The New York Post reported: “Local activists, legislators and school administrators in Illinois have been coaching migrants, including criminals charged with sex assaults, weapons violations and worse, on their rights and how to evade ICE agents.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy appeared to claim he was housing an illegal immigrant in his $9 million mansion.
This political peacocking should come as no surprise, it attracts the leftist loons who hatched the idea of sanctuary cities. Republicans should counter it by taking a page from Trump’s successful tariff brinksmanship.
At the core of both successes was Trump’s threat to make nations pay a price for not doing what they should have been doing already. The same applies to sanctuary cities but to an even greater degree. These Democrat jurisdictions are impeding the enforcement of U.S. law, in an area in which the federal government has full constitutional authority.
It is also not inconsistent with Republicans’ federalism philosophy. Federalism is good for America’s overall governance. It allowed for red-state sanity during COVID’s insane blue-state lockdowns. Without American examples that life could still go on during the pandemic, who knows how long Democrats in deep blue states would have continued locking students out of classrooms and shutting down businesses? Today, federalism is allowing for governmental laboratories on the value of low- and no-income-tax and increased school choice.
But constitutionally federalism can exist only where the federal government was not given explicit authority. Immigration and national defense are just such areas. States do not have jurisdiction over immigration, yet that is exactly what sanctuary cities are unilaterally claiming for themselves.
Republicans should therefore impose a price that sanctuary cities will respond to. First, they should put language into all the funding bills they pass saying that no funds in the legislation should be expended on illegal immigrants unless otherwise expressly stipulated.
Second, all federal dollars apportioned to states and jurisdictions should only use U.S. citizens and those with legal immigrant status to determine eligible populations for the programs they fund. Illegal immigration should not be able to inflate a jurisdiction’s numbers when calculations of federal appropriations are determined.
Ultimately, House seats should only be apportioned based on the number of U.S. citizens residing in a state, not simply the total population number. Ignoring this means diluting the votes of U.S. citizens in states that do not encourage illegal immigration.
Limiting federal spending to legal residents should result in cost savings by reducing the overall level of aid needed (since the pool of recipients no longer includes illegal immigrants), better targeting the aid that is distributed, and reducing spending on illegal immigrants as the deterrence to illegal immigration exerts its effect.
The Left lives on others’ resources. Without federal dollars, their expensive programs are not sustainable. Only if these other programs are threatened with reduced funding will they have an incentive to cooperate with federal law enforcement. Note how quickly Gov. Murphy’s bravado vanished when he realized he was going to be prosecuted if his claims about harboring an illegal immigrant were true.
Already we have seen evidence that disincentives work. Economically, in the form of threatened tariffs, they delivered with both Mexico and Canada. However, disincentives are also having an unexpected impact on sanctuary cities. Noncompliant jurisdictions are already complaining about collateral arrests — illegal immigrants who ICE finds in the process of capturing the illegal immigrants with criminal records that they are first targeting.
The reason for these collateral arrests is that by helping illegal immigrants with criminal records evade arrest, sanctuary city authorities are forcing “us to go into the community and find the guy we’re looking for,” White House border czar Tom Homan said. When they find them with others, who are also in the country illegally, even if these others weren’t the intended targets, they get arrested too. The disincentive is clear — even to authorities in sanctuary cities who are blind to immigration law.
Losing federal dollars will be a much bigger disincentive for sanctuary cities. Having lost their common sense, these Democrat bastions should also lose common cents. It’s the only way to stop sanctuary city insanity.
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READ MORE from J.T. Young:
Taking It to the Streets … Democrats Finally Revert to Vindictive Form
The Left Is Agog at Trump’s Audacity … Because He Meant What He Promised
As California Burns, Is It Also Awakening to Disastrous Democrat Policies?
J.T. Young is the author of the new book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.