09/04/2007
From: J. Paige Straley
Re: Saturday Forum: Two Arizona Readers Compile A List of Sanctuary Cities; Is Your Home Town One Of Them?
The information you presented in your Saturday Forum about US cities (and even states – Maine, for instance) extending sanctuary status to illegal aliens is disturbing.
Every public office-holder is bound to defend the Constitution and, by extension, the federal laws enacted under it.
The famous doctrine of nullification was one of the causes of the Civil War, and it has not been successfully invoked since that conflict. Yet that is exactly what a sanctuary policy does … nullifies federal law.
Despite some arguments to the contrary, I would be surprised if sanctuary could be construed as a states rights (10th Amendment) issue. Immigration control is clearly a federal task.
Thus, extending sanctuary to illegal aliens could be considered a conspiracy to assist illegal aliens to evade federal law. There are strict sanctions prohibiting this behavior.
Sanctuary is reprehensible. The United States attorneys in the various districts should convene federal grand juries in those communities that offer sanctuary in order to consider charges of conspiracy.
It would only take a couple of cases to very quickly roll back the sanctuary policy throughout the country.
The new Attorney General, yet to be appointed, might act to quash such proceedings. But if he is, like Alberto Gonzales, a Hispanic, he should recuse himself because of a conflict of interest.
Whoever the Attorney General may be, it would be interesting to force his hand.
Straley’s VDARE.COM column about Peter Brimelow’s immigration debate at Davidson College is here. And his most recent article about Mecklenburg County, North Carolina Sheriff Jim Pendergraph using 287 (g) is here. Other letters from Straley are here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.