The death toll continues to rise in the California wildfires that have burned through the Los Angeles area in recent weeks. Now it appears that a suspect arrested near one of the fires “with a flamethrower” allegedly attempting to start more fires is an illegal immigrant.
What’s more, his illegal status will be to his advantage under California laws, because the self-designated Sanctuary State will protect him.
“ICE will place a detainer request on him, but the federal agency does not expect it to be honored due to California’s sanctuary state law,” the New York Post reports.
In fact, California is positioning itself to oppose all of President-elect Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, with illegal immigration at the top of the list. It’s the start of the legislative battle.
But Republicans—and the growing number of Democrats breaking out in sanity on the immigration issue—must not go into the new Congress looking for another “Grand Bargain.” Securing the border must be the starting point for discussions—not the end goal.
Fortunately, there’s much President-elect Trump can do on his first day in office toward this; much of it will simply involve undoing President Joe Biden’s bad policies and executive orders. Yet “some improvements may also require legislation, including obtaining more funding to finish the border wall and hire more immigration judges and other border security personnel,” as Fox News reports.
The danger here is clear; Democrats know they no longer control the White House, the House of Representatives or the Senate. But they still control much of the messaging. If they can present their open borders agenda as a Grand Bargain, they can at least muddy the waters, if not stall President-elect Trump’s agenda.
That’s what was behind the Biden administration’s last attempt at a border “compromise,” the “bipartisan border security bill” that died in the Senate last May.
That was no compromise, as the Heritage Foundation pointed out: “
It’s also what was behind President Ronald Reagan’s Grand Bargain on immigration with Democrats in 1986. The Immigration Reform and Control Act was supposed to bring order to our nation’s increasingly chaotic immigration system.
“There was just one problem — the 1986 reform didn’t work,” the Washington Post eventually admitted. “The law was supposed to put a stop to illegal immigration into the United States once and for all. Instead, the exact opposite happened. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the country soared…”
Yet now, Democrats seem poised to propose another Grand Bargain. The Washington Post says that’s because public sentiment is so obviously in favor of border security: “it’s become pretty evident which way the wind is blowing…”
As NBC News reports, some Democrats are contemplating a shift in strategy: “The shift some are advocating would push to cut the overall number of people coming into the country while at the same time advocating for revamping pathways for immigrants to come into the country legally based on the needs of the economy and humanitarian relief,” NBC News explains. The bill included “a path to citizenship for Dreamers and improved visa programs to fill key sectors of the U.S. economy, such as farming and health care.”
But President-elect Trump must not take the bait. Border security is a non-negotiable, a precondition to any talk of comprehensive immigration reform.
For his part, Trump seems amenable to a broader immigration reform package—eventually.
“We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to, at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” he told NBC soon after his Nov. 5 victory. “And you know, I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in.”
But let’s ensure that it all happens in that order—we must start by securing the border. And then we can talk about comprehensive immigration reform.