Democrats who advocate leniency for illegal immigrant criminals should want to host as many migrants as possible in their home states. After all, what better way to protect them from what progressives claim are discriminatory immigration and border patrol agents. And yet, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was outraged when she learned of President Donald Trump’s plan to ship incoming migrants to the safety of so-called sanctuary cities.
Pelosi has given up trying to find legitimate reasons to argue against Trump. Instead of accepting a proposal that would give Democrats everything they want regarding immigration, Pelosi just called the plan “disrespectful,” demonstrating how she is more concerned with opposing the president than helping out migrant families.
On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that the White House at least twice considered a proposal to send immigrant detainees to sanctuary cities, including Pelosi’s district in San Francisco. In these Democratic strongholds, local officials refuse to hand recently arrested illegal immigrants over to federal immigration authorities for deportation.
Although the idea was quickly rejected by Homeland Security attorneys, that didn’t stop Pelosi from using the scuttled plan to attack Trump during a Friday press conference.
“I don’t know anything about it, but again it’s just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face as a country, as a people, to address who we are: a nation of immigrants,” the House speaker said.
Besides offering a vague denunciation of Trump’s “toxic anti-immigrant policies,” Democrats are hard-pressed to find honest and defensible reasons for opposing this now-defunct policy proposal. If, as Pelosi has said, the president is “ripping little children away from their parents” at the southern border, then why won’t she personally house these families in her own backyard?
Despite warnings from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Democrats successfully capped the number of detention beds at facilities that house illegal immigrants as part of a February budget deal. Since then, thousands of illegal immigrants have been released onto U.S. streets after they are furnished with paper notices to return to court at a later date.
The fact is that Democratic policy has created a nightmare at the southern border, and dozens of American towns and cities are forced to pay the price. As the architects of this man-made disaster, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the obstructionist Democrats should be made to suffer the consequences in their own districts.
Until Pelosi comes up with a better solution for the border, why not let San Francisco and other Democratic cities bear the burden? At the very least, this proposal may up the ante and force Democrats to work on finding a real solution to the border crisis.