Donald Trump was asked on Wednesday if the Christmas-market truck massacre in Berlin had caused him to reevaluate his various proposals regarding immigration from terror-spawning regions. His answer sent the liberal media into another nervous breakdown: “I’ve been proven to be right,” Trump responded. “One hundred percent correct.”
And so he has. To the New York Times, however, Trump’s words were front-page news. “Trump Suggests Berlin Attack Affirms His Plan to Bar Muslims,” read the headline (even though Trump had not specifically addressed the temporary ban in his response to the reporter’s question). The Times assumes that its readers will be shocked by any suggested connection between Islamic terror attacks and immigration policy. The Times, for its part, treats the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” like the Ebola virus, inoculating itself from any misperception that it would independently pen such scandalous words by the liberal use of scare quotes. “One area where Mr. Trump and his advisers have been unswerving is their repeated denunciation of ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’” writes the Times incredulously.
Despite the Times’ protestation, the problem of Islamic terrorism in the West is, among other things, an immigration issue, whether an attack has been committed by first-generation immigrants or second. But the Berlin massacre does more than vindicate Trump’s planned reassessment of entry protocols. It also vindicates his intention to eliminate local sanctuary policies. The suspected Berlin attacker was, like many previous Islamic terrorists, a thug first, a terrorist second. Anis Amri had been arrested several times in his home country of Tunisia for various street crimes, including petty theft; he was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for stealing a car. He committed arson in Italy. He assaulted fellow prisoners while jailed in Italy. He sold drugs in a Berlin park.
Such crimes, if committed by an illegal alien in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, or the 300 other sanctuary jurisdictions in the U.S., would induce local jail authorities and police chiefs to hold that alien in order to protect him against any federal effort to deport him. Politicians in sanctuary cities work feverishly to bury this core fact: The sanctuary policies they have rushed to defend in the wake of Trump’s election are designed to shield street criminals and thugs from deportation. Such policies forbid jail authorities from honoring a federal request to hold an illegal-alien criminal beyond his release date so that federal agents can start removal proceedings against him.
On Friday, BBC Radio interviewed Seattle mayor Ed Murray about his city’s recently reaffirmed sanctuary policy. Murray ducked any question that would have clarified the fact that it was criminal law-breakers Seattle was shielding. Instead, Murray waxed self-righteous about his “moral obligation” to defeat immigration enforcement, with not a peep of acknowledgment that Seattle’s defiance of federal authority meant that law-abiding Seattle residents would be forced to pay the costs of illegal-alien crime.