By Immigration Editor Emma Goldman
with Texas Correspondent Gus McRae in Eagle Pass
If she's back in the The Spy, you know it's time for the latest immigration outrages, likely featuring more dead refugees. Sadly you are correct.
Welcome to Eagle Pass, a desolate kraal on the Rio Grande hundreds of miles from, well, anywhere. It's one of the spots chosen by desperate refugees, having walked over a thousand miles, some of it through the most dangerous and forsaken places on earth, fleeing violence and oppression for a chance to mow Mitt Romney's lawn or slaughter cattle for Big Macs.
While the great and the good on Capitol Hill were chasing that ever-elusive immigration “compromise” (about which more later), down on the border Texas Gov. Greg “I am the law” Abbott was taking matters into his own hands.
Previously Greg had mobilized the Texas National Guard to usurp the federal role in policing the border. They proceeded to rig barbed wire and razor sharp river buoys to entrap and drown migrants, to great approbation from Texans, Republicans, and the like.
Recently they took their rebellion to the next level, as The Washington Post reports:
The feds are the US Border Patrol, the federal agency charged with enforcing federal law at the border. Under Article VI of the Constitution that Republicans supposedly venerate, federal law is supreme and states can't interfere with its operation.
While this is evident from the plain text, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Republican Anthony Kennedy and joined by Republican John Roberts, said as much just 12 years ago:
The Government of the United States has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens. ... This authority rests, in part, on the National Government’s constitutional power to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 4, and its inherent power as sovereign to control and conduct relations with foreign nations....
It is fundamental that foreign countries concerned about the status, safety, and security of their nationals in the United States must be able to confer and communicate on this subject with one national sovereign, not the 50 separate States.
Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012).
For these reasons, the President of the United States seeks the help of that same Court, now larded with three new Republican lunatics, to vindicate the right of federal officers to enforce federal law:
Under the Supremacy Clause, state law cannot be applied to
restrain those federal agents from carrying out their federally
authorized activities. That conclusion follows from centuries of
this Court’s precedent: Maryland could not tax the Bank of the
United States (McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316
3
(1819)), or enforce its driver’s license laws against federal Post
Office workers delivering mail ..; California could not bring criminal charges against a
Deputy U.S. Marshal for his actions to protect a Supreme Court
Justice..; and Arizona could
not superimpose its own approval process on a congressionally authorized dam-construction project ... So too here: Texas cannot use state tort law to
restrain federal Border Patrol agents carrying out their federal
duties.
This weekend, the dispute was transformed from a thrilling constitutional law exam question into a matter of life and death, or, to put it more precisely, death:
According to NBC News,
A woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande on Friday night in Eagle Pass, Texas, after U.S. border agents were prevented from responding, federal officials said Saturday.
In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said U.S. Border Patrol agents were made aware of the migrants’ distress by the Mexican government but were unable to enter the area from the U.S. side after Texas National Guard troops, under the direction of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, prevented them from doing so.
“In responding to a distress call from the Mexican government, Border Patrol agents were physically barred by Texas officials from entering the area,” the spokesperson said.
Lying as usual, Abbott claimed that after blocking federal officials, his Texas goons looked out over the dark river, saw nothing, and went back to watching the football game.
The obvious solution to this rebellion is to federalize the Texas National Guard so that it no longer is subject to the illegal and depraved whims of the Governor of Texas, as President Eisenhower did to protect school desegregation from obstruction by an earlier generation of smug white supremacist Southern Governors.
But Democrats have chosen a different course, which will not only fail to protect migrants, but will jeopardize Ukraine's valiant defense of freedom and democracy against Russian aggression.
How'd that happen?
Months ago, Biden decided to wrap aid to Ukraine and Israel with additional money for border personnel, asylum officers, and such. It was a rationally-designed sweetener. Therefore it was rejected out of hand by Republicans.
Instead the patriotic Republican supporters of insurrection and election denial proposed their own bill, which would repeal asylum and require the roundup and deportation of millions of noncitizens already in the US, many of whom have pending claims for relief.
As that goodly Man of God, Senator Wilfred M. Romney kindly explained:
"Dems want $106B [for Ukraine and Israel aid]—GOP wants a closed border. That’s the trade. But clueless Dems want to negotiate the border bill. Not going to happen," Romney said on X, formerly Twitter. "Is an open border more important to Dems than Ukraine and Israel?"
We certainly know what's more important to Romney.
We have to agree with ol' Profiles in Courage on one point: the Democrats are clueless.
Despite clear statements from every Republican that they have no intention of reaching a good-faith compromise on immigration, Democrats press on into the Valley of Legislative Death. To get the aid needed by our ally, which any legislator with a shred of patriotism or concern for US national security should approve in a moment, Democrats are apparently willing to concede to
- turning away asylum seekers at the border with no remedy other than to wait in Mexico to suffer in danger and poverty
- requiring the detention of asylum seekers, including women and children, pending resolution of their claims
- making it harder for asylum seekers at the border, having walked thousands of miles with their babies on their backs, to meet some heightened threshold for relief of which they are totally unaware
- denying asylum to relief to those arriving via third countries that have not actively persecuted them (in other words, all of them)
- allowing refugees anywhere in the country to be swept into detention and deportation through expedited proceedings that provide little if any chance for the noncitizen to substantiate their claims (which of course has nothing to do with easing conditions at the border); and
- limiting the President's historic ability to parole in refugees fleeing war and persecution on a temporary basis or pending resolution of their asylum claims (which has helped reduce queuing at the border).
That's quite a list. Republicans have pocketed them all and said they aren't good enough, while brave Ukrainians, soldier and citizen alike, die in their trenches and apartments due to lack of US weaponry and the callous indifference of subversive Republicans.
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| Now playing on the Rio Grande |
As a result, Democrats have conceded that helping our allies in wartime is dependent upon cruel, useless changes to immigration law that will only increase the pressure on refugees to cross without inspection and vanish into the country with no chance to prove their claims.
In exchange for which, Democrats have gotten – nothing. No aid. No compromise. And dead children on the banks of Rio Grande while the bent Republican Supreme Court weighs reinstating some sort of state nullification of federal law.
The previous generation of Republicans had no problem questioning the patriotism or toughness of Democrats who wouldn't sign a blank check for needless war and torture. Why the Democrats can't return the favor and ask Republicans to choose between freedom and Putin in Ukraine remains obscure.
The problem that Democrats have is they, like Anne Frank, believe deep down that people are really good at heart. That may be true for some people, but not Nazis and their spiritual descendants, Republicans.
That belief didn't work out so great for Anne Frank. It doesn't appear to be helping Democrats much either, as the bodies of toddlers continue to wash up on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
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