Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s been a lot of news lately about the efforts of the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, their efforts to round up illegal aliens. And they are prioritizing two groups: those who have criminal records and those who have already been processed for deportation and have evaded apprehension.
But in many cities, in blue states, or at least in blue cities, there is organized resistance. Sometimes it’s very violent by Antifa. Sometimes it’s sponsored or encouraged by the Democratic Party: Gavin Newsom in California, our governor, or Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, openly calling for resistance, or Gov. JB Pritzker of Chicago.
What’s really disturbing is we’re starting to see a new—I would call it—neo-Confederate successionist ideology in these cities. In these blue cities, the officials who run them, the mayors or the police chiefs, believe they are a law unto themselves. In other words, within the confines of Chicago or within the confines of Portland, they can nullify all federal laws, just in the way that South Carolina said it could on the eve of the Civil War: The Union does not apply to us. We are morally superior.
I wanna remind everybody how that works out in reality. If you are an ICE agent and you’re in an ICE detention center, you may not be able to get in or out of work or you can’t fulfill your duties because there is a siege on of Antifa semi-terrorists and their sympathizers that surround you. And the Oregon police will not help you. In fact, in a recent demonstration, a reporter was arrested while reporting on the inaction of the Oregon police and the violence of the protesters.
If you look at a recent suburb in Chicago, resisters to ICE actually did a blockade. They had 10 or so cars and they, by design, ambushed an ICE patrol and stopped the agents from being able to go forward or backward in their vehicles. One of them was armed with an automatic weapon. When ICE called for the Chicago police to lend assistance, because they were an extremist, the Chicago police did not.
Gov. Pritzker sort of, basically, said that ICE lies. And so, we don’t really pay any attention to them. Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago didn’t help.
In other words, we’re starting to see now organized resistance, not on the street by thugs and terrorists and resisters, but we’re starting to see, in neo-Confederate fashion, elected officials.
And the premise that they’re using is, again: We are a law unto ourselves.
I would like to remind them of two things: Not all Americans are Portlanders or Chicagoans. But everybody that’s a citizen in Chicago and everybody who is a citizen in Portland is, first and foremost, a U.S. citizen. And therefore, subject to the laws, the federal laws of the government. First and foremost.
And what these elected officials are doing and what law enforcement is doing, at the municipal level, is no different than what caused the Civil War.
They are actively encouraging resistance, and nearly armed resistance because these officers are law enforcement, to federal agents who are trying to dutifully fulfill their constitutional mandates to protect the border and ensure that people who come across do so legally. They’re just fulfilling the law—federal immigration law. And yet they’re being resisted by—I guess you would call it—neo-Confederates.
Where is this going to lead if it’s not stopped now by mayors and governors in these blue jurisdictions? What’s on the horizon is not just blockading ICE cars and not just not rendering assistance. As it gets more and more extreme, you will start to see blue mayors and city officials actually use their powers within their jurisdictions to stop, physically stop, ICE. And when we get to that point, we’re really on the verge of civil insurrection and we’re back to something like 1861.
I’d like to end with an example for our blue city mayors, especially in Portland and Chicago. In 1963, George Wallace said: Alabama is a world to itself. It has unique customs and traditions and history that the federal government does not understand. So, the federal government cannot come into our state and tell us that we have to give civil rights protections to African Americans who want to attend the University of Alabama. So I, Gov. Wallace, will stand in the door and force people who are black out.
And what happened? The Kennedy administration said: No, this isn’t 1861, Gov. Wallace. I’m sorry. You do not have the right—the right, moral or actual—to refuse a federal mandate. And all men are created equal, and we’re gonna enforce that.
And so, what President John F. Kennedy did, and Bobby Kennedy as attorney general, they federalized the Alabama National Guard and they brought in U.S. troops, and they forced George Wallace to step aside and to accept people according to the laws of the United States of America.
So, I would like to remind the Left, you’re on the side of George Wallace, resisting federal law. And ICE, that you despise, is on the right side of history, trying to enforce laws that have been broken for the protection of all citizens, all citizens in this United States, including those in Chicago and including those in Portland who are having their civil rights endangered if they live next to an ICE facility or if they’re an ICE agent in general. They are endangered. And the federal government has a right to protect them.
And so, I would urge you all to stop what you’re doing and get back to the right side of history.
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