Three months ago, in the wake of President Trump’s election win, I wrote a piece for this website in which I predicted that if leftist political and judicial entities acted to thwart the initial thrust of Trump’s immigration policy—a strong emphasis on deporting criminal migrants—that the Democrats would lose the midterm elections. The article was based on decades of writing about politics. The idea that the far-left would charge to the rescue of a dangerous criminal element based on spurious ideologies about race and so-called diversity-equity-and- inclusion was wholly plausible.
The prediction turned out to be correct, but the lengths leftist judges and formerly credible organizations like the ACLU would go in their attempts to keep the “worst first” in our civic midst couldn’t have been foreseen. One outlandish case puts this misguided adjudication into stark relief. In a March 14 ruling, a judge declared the deportation of some Venezuelan gangsters to be unconstitutional based on the undetermined legality of Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), and issued an order for the jetliner already winging the alleged malefactors to an El Salvadoran prison be turned around so that the deportees could receive some yet-to-be determined due process.
On April 8, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump Administration’s right to deport under the AEA as long as the deportees receive a prior review of their cases. In an example of the warring ideologies at play in the immigration debate, both President Trump and the ACLU declared victory.
As quoted in the linked Euro News report, assenting Justice Brett Kavanaugh affirmed that all the justices agreed that these deported illegal aliens should “receive judicial reviews of their transfers,” and said, “the only question is where that judicial review should occur.”
This statement sets the stage for ongoing proceedings in which alleged migrant criminals will get their day in court. The process of proving they should be deported will be made by Trump Justice Department or Homeland Security attorneys, and arguments against their deportation will be made by—another prediction here—ACLU lawyers.
There’s talk in the political realm of issues in which 80 percent come down on one side, and 20 percent on the other. Whether to allow biological men to compete in women’s sports is the current model for this percentile breakdown, with commentators, specifically Piers Morgan among others—predicting that if Democrats fight for the 20 percent position “they may never win another election.”
In the January article, I wrote: “Law-abiding immigrants here illegally will likely be given options for a legitimate pathway to citizenship, a path that doesn’t make fools out of the many who sought to follow the law and enter legally. As long as they stay out of trouble, there will be hope. Those pathways will crumble if the radical left attempts to thwart policies aimed at ridding the nation of dangerous criminals.”
They’ll crumble because arguing against the deportation of criminal migrants forces a majority of Americans who might otherwise be sympathetic to law-abiding undocumented immigrants into a bunker-style position. Any empathy they might hold is eroded by the fear that if Democrats parse out and stall on the issue, Trump’s promise of a secure border will go up in smoke.
Making a “federal case” out of a 20 percent position might serve an ideology, but it’s the kind of politicking that gives aid to the opposition. Polling on immigration issues is all over the map, but I hold that staunch resistance to the deportation of criminal migrants will backfire on the Democratic Party.
