RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/democrats-embrace-lawlessness-at-the-border-in-response-to-family-separations/

Decriminalizing unauthorized entry as most Democratic presidential candidates propose won’t end the separations; it will only worsen the crisis at our border.

During the first Democratic primary debate last week, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro succeeded in creating the viral moment that all second-tier candidates hope for when he challenged all of his opponents to support the decriminalization of illegal border crossings.

Castro, having deftly identified the separation of migrant families as the issue that has most exercised the Democratic base, stormed into his first debate performance with a ready-made solution: repeal section 1325 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which makes “improper entry” into the U.S. a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, thereby ensuring that no migrants would be detained unless they’d committed another, ostensibly more serious offense.

“The reason that they’re separating these little children from their families is they’re using Section 1325 . . . to incarcerate the parents and then separate them,” Castro said to applause.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-most-voters-support-citizenship-question-census/

Two-thirds of voters support allowing the U.S. census to include a question about an individual’s citizenship status, disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision to block the question.

In a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Tuesday, 67 percent of respondents said the question, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” should be allowed on the census. That number included about 88 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats, and 63 percent of independents agreed.

“The public here agrees with the administration that it makes sense to ask citizenship on the census,” said poll director Mark Penn. “It is a clear supermajority of Americans on this issue.”

The question has become a contentious issue because of its implications for undocumented immigrants, who may not want to reveal their citizenship statusfor fear of potential repercussions. Last week, the Supreme Court shot down the Trump administration’s push to include the question in the 2020 census, temporarily prohibiting the question’s inclusion while requesting that the Commerce Department explain in more detail why it is necessary. The administration said the question would enhance the enforcement of part of the Voting Rights Act.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/a_dirty_dangerous_border_situation_with_illegals_threatening_riots.html

Democrats have gone a long way to create chaos at the border.  They’ve denied necessary funds for law enforcement to pay for humane conditions in detention camps during a border surge.  They’ve nullified any meaning to border law.  It’s all a politically cynical bid to Blame Trump.

Thus far, the issue has been viewed and reported as a public relations issue for President Trump, with reports of children brought to the U.S. illegally now in detention without soap or toothbrushes.  The media and the Democrats have been dining out on it, calling Trump a heel.

There’s more than that, of course.  There are the legal challenges from the Left to any border enforcement, the strange collaborations between some Democratic political machines and the Mexican and Central American governments, the left-wing activist networks linked to Democrats actively recruiting illegals, and the open encouragement of illegal immigration by blue states offering huge arrays of benefits.  If chaos were the aim, Democrats couldn’t have done it better. 

But it’s actually something much more dangerous.  We’re now seeing potential for violent migrant riots.  The mobs rolling over our border now are violent, and they demand to be let in without vetting. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/salvadoran-president-on-death-of-drowned-father-and-daughter-it-is-our-fault/

The newly elected president of El Salvador has taken responsibility for the deaths of a father and daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to reach the U.S., telling the BBC that the tragedy could have been avoided if conditions in the Central American country were not so dire.

A photo of Oscar and Valeria Martinez lying face down in the Rio Grande went viral last week, stirring outrage among activists and political figures who were quick to cite the Trump administration’s immigration policies to explain the tragedy. But President Nayib Bukele, who was elected last month, believes that blame for the deaths rests with Salvadoran officials, who have failed to curb the violent crime and economic deprivation that is fueling record immigration to the U.S.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to, people flee their homes because they feel they have to,” Bukele told the BBC in an interview published Monday. “Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.”

“We can blame any other country but what about our blame? What country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault,” he added.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/01/constitution-grant-citizenship-anyone-born-inside-united-states/

Originalism is the theory of legal interpretation holding that the meaning of a law is the original public understanding of the actual text. That is to say, we are bound to interpret a statute or constitutional provision to mean whatever the people at the time it was passed commonly understood its actual words to mean. It’s a pretty straightforward idea and comports with how most people read things in their everyday lives. Words mean what they mean, not what we wish them to mean.

But what happens when, after a thorough, originalist look into the meaning of a constitutional provision, the best answer scholars can come up with is that we don’t really know? That is, in essence, the question debated in at a meeting of the Federalist Society in Philadelphia earlier this week when law professors John Eastman and John Yoo took the stage to discuss the meaning of the Citizenship Clause of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, and specifically how it applies to the children of illegal immigrants and birth tourists.

How Should We Interpret Citizenship?

It was a lively and thoughtful debate between two conservative law professors who clearly respected one another. Projected on the screen behind them were the words of the Citizenship Clause, with the relevant section in italics for emphasis:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-built-the-cages-for-illegals-not-trump-says-obama-ice-chief/

It was only a few months ago that Democrats were dismissing the crisis at the border as manufactured by Trump, and now they’re comparing migrant detention centers to concentration camps and blaming Trump for “putting kids in cages.”

But for those still trying to blame President Trump, Barack Obama’s former ICE chief, Thomas Homan, has a reality check for them. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, Homan explained that the “cages” Democrats are blaming on Trump were the product of the Obama administration:

“I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built,” said Thomas Homan, who was Obama’s executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for nearly four years.

At an immigration conference today, Homan, under consideration for a new position of “border czar” in the Trump administration, grew visibly angry answering a question about “cages” often cited by Democratic critics of the president.

Homan, who ran Obama’s successful deportation operation, ripped Democrats who question Trump immigration officials on the Obama-era idea.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hawley-slams-fellow-lawmakers-pa

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) lashed out at fellow lawmakers during a Wednesday hearing, expressing frustration with the lack of substantive legislative responses to the ongoing crisis at the southern border.

Hawley cited grisly reports of inhumane conditions that migrants, especially children, are being forced to endure, and argued that those hardships are the direct result of Congress’s failure to allocate more resources to the agencies tasked with sheltering and providing medical care to the record number of asylum-seekers arriving at the border.

“The behavior of this Congress is absolutely pathetic. I mean, it is just pathetic,” Hawley began. “The problem is this Congress never does anything. This Congress refuses to do anything. We know what the facts are, you’ve outlined them again today: CBP is overcapacity, underfunded, undermanned. ICE: overcapacity, underfunded. HHS: overcapacity, underfunded. Yet this Congress will do nothing.”

Hawley’s testimony comes one day after acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief John Sanders announced his resignation amid continued reports of migrant children receiving inadequate housing and medical care at Border Patrol holding facilities, where the migrants are held until they can be transferred to HHS custody. That transfer process now routinely exceeds the 72 hours allotted by law due to HHS’s own inadequate funding and staffing.

The Senate plans to vote this week on a $4.5 billion spending package that would provide increased funding to CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and HHS. The bill’s passage has been threatened by a companion bill, which passed the House Tuesday, that bars the allocation of funds for certain Department of Defense enforcement actions.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/there-is-an-existential-threat-to-the-very-idea-of-american-citizenship-and-democrats-are-leading-the-charge/

Jim Geraghty in NRO:

Sometimes our political debates are furious and deeply divided because of demagogues, clickbait media, and hype. But sometimes our political debates are furious because they reflect a conflict of fundamentally opposed worldviews, where no compromise is feasible.

Many of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates want to fundamentally redefine who is American — that is, if you show up from another country and want to be here, you ought to enjoy the full rights of citizenship and all of the benefits provided to American citizens.

Bernie Sanders put it clearly: “We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and open that to the undocumented.” In other words, if are a citizen of another country and you want a free college education, all you have to do is show up in the United States and get accepted at any one of the 1,626 public colleges in the United States.

Listen carefully to Elizabeth Warren’s statement today backing a proposed law by Democratic candidate Julian Castro that would destroy any semblance of a border.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274129/obama-judge-invents-sanctuary-courthouses-matthew-vadum

All courthouses in Massachusetts have become ICE-free zones because a zealous left-wing Obama judge took it upon herself to forbid immigration officers from detaining suspected illegal aliens on judicial soil.

This lawless order is reportedly the first judicial fiat in the United States to block immigration arrests across an entire state, according to The Epoch Times. Massachusetts happens to be the home of state Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, who was charged earlier this year under federal law for helping an illegal alien evade an ICE agent in her courthouse.

Although police have been arresting suspects in courthouses ever since courthouses were invented –it is a great deal safer for police than raiding a factory or a home— labor lawyer Indira Talwani, now a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, granted a preliminary injunction barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “from civilly arresting parties, witnesses, and others attending Massachusetts courthouses on official business while they are going to, attending, or leaving the courthouse.” The order specifies that it “does not limit ICE’s criminal arrests of such individuals or its civil arrests of individuals who are brought to Massachusetts courthouses while in state or federal custody.”

President Barack Hussein Obama nominated Talwani Sept. 24, 2013. The U.S. Senate confirmed Talwani on May 8, 2014.