Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms made headlines this week when she announced an executive order forbidding her city’s jails from accepting ICE detainees. It was a move that drew harsh criticism from both sides. The right obviously wanted her to work with immigration enforcement to ease the already-strained detention system for border patrol and ICE. The left told her this would only redirect ICE agents to use for-profit private jails.

But Bottoms was resolute despite the criticism.

“I, like many others, have been horrified watching the impact of President Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy on children and families,” Bottoms said in a statement. “My personal angst has been compounded by the City of Atlanta’s long-standing agreement with the U.S. Marshal’s Office to house ICE detainees in our City jail.”

Vice President Mike Pence brought up the issue in a speech he delivered to ICE employees in Atlanta.

My Take

It’s one thing to object to measures put forth by the federal government. This can be a good thing as the tenets of limited-government federalism teach us. DC is far too powerful right now and cities need to be willing to stand up just as individuals and states do.

But this move by Bottoms is nothing more than political fodder. She’s trying to build a name for herself as someone who stood up to the President’s immigration policy, but is putting her own city and citizens at risk as a result. When ICE has no place to detain criminal illegal immigrants, they often have no recourse but to release them. This may seem insane, but that’s the state of our immigration system thanks to people like Bottoms.

Keep in mind, they aren’t bringing “family units” or separating children from their families, which is the premise behind Bottoms’ protest. The people ICE brings to Atlanta jails are criminals. These are people who have, in many cases, done harm to people who live in Atlanta. For Bottoms to get political while putting her own citizens at risk is ridiculous.

Such is the state of a divided America where Democrats are willing to harm American citizens if it means scoring political points against President Trump. Mayor Bottoms should not be celebrated. She should be condemned for bowing to political expediency.

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A reported “road rage incident” turned deadly for a sheriff’s deputy and the man they were trying to stop on Tuesday when the perpetrated opened fire after being pulled over. It has now been confirmed by ICE that the perpetrator was an illegal immigrant.

Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro, 29, died at the hospital after being wounded in another shootout with police. He killed Kittitas County sheriff’s deputy Ryan Thompson and wounded another police officer in the subsequent shootout.

“Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro, a citizen of Mexico, was unlawfully present in the United States. He entered the U.S. on April 11, 2014, through a Laredo, Texas, Land Port of Entry on a Temporary Agricultural Worker (H-2A) visa. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has no record of Flores Del Toro leaving the U.S., nor extending his visa after it expired.”

My Take

Conservatives are so focused on the border crisis that we often forget the other elephant in the room – visa overstays. Del Toro was recorded as entering the country on a H-2A visa, but he didn’t leave when he was supposed to as designated by his status.

We often point to the border wall as the solution, but this criminal didn’t sneak into the country illegally. He remained illegally, and it’s a problem that requires an entire overhaul of our immigration system. If we can’t keep track of and remove those in the country illegally, then our immigration system is worthless.

Regardless of the circumstances that allowed him to stay in the country, the bottom line is he wasn’t supposed to be here and a law enforcement officer is dead because the system is broken.

Over 100,000 illegal immigrants have been released by ICE following apprehension in the last three months alone. That’s more than 1,000 per day. Why are they doing this? Because Washington DC refuses to give them the resources or facilities they need to deal with the national emergency at the border.

And yes, this is an emergency. We can debate all day about whether or not it’s a national emergency that should be declared as such by the President or whether he should have been getting this tough on the issue long before the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, but what can’t be argued is whether or not this problem has grown to the status of being a true and tangible crisis.

It’s not manufactured as a scare tactic. It’s not the White House bending numbers, as many in mainstream media want to believe. This is real.

As the Daily Caller points out, only some of the 100,000 released illegal immigrants have been required to wear tracking devices:

Overwhelmed ICE Facilities Forced To Release 100,000 Illegal Aliens In Past Three Months @dailycaller @thejasonhopkins https://t.co/f3THolczsa pic.twitter.com/hKP26B3Qti

— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) March 22, 2019

There are plenty of dysfunctional programs and agencies in the United States. That can be expected since government generally doesn’t handle situations with efficiency, frugality, or common sense. But there are certain responsibilities of the government that should get special treatment. Our national defense, whether through the military or from outside threats such as illegal immigration, should be a high priority for our representatives in Washington DC to get right. The fact they’re dropping this particular ball so spectacularly is unacceptable.

We have our own problems among American citizens. We don’t need to inherit more problems by allowing the borders to be wide open as they are, then to not even empower our law enforcement agency tasked with capturing and detaining illegal immigrants only exacerbates the problem.

I’ve spoken out against the GOP’s lackadaisical approach to border security since before President Trump took office. I’ve continued to denounce their inactivity and the bad advice that prompted the President to wait until December, 2018, to finally put his foot down on the issue. Now we’re seeing the fruits of their inactivity.

With that said, it’s still the Democrats who are the main cause for consternation.

The problem isn’t that Democrats don’t acknowledge the invasion at the border that is overwhelming all current methods of security. It’s that they don’t care. This is what they want. America’s sovereignty is unimportant to them.

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