Two lower court decisions ruled against Biden holding his termination decision violated the APA and immigration law. President Biden has ignored the court orders to implement the MPP without consequence other than Republicans complaining about it on cable talk programs.

Biden’s policy has created a de facto open southern border that allows millions of immigrants to enter our country illegally, including drug smugglers, sex traffickers, and terrorists.

Since the court is without enforcement authority and Congress is generally unable to take on the Executive, the simple answer may be there will be no political consequence to Biden until the 2024 election. But what about the many Americans injured by the millions of illegal immigrants trespassing on farms causing damage to land and animals, and the assaults and even murders of Americans, not to mention the costs of migrant care imposed on hundreds of small towns?

A similar situation occurred in 1832 when President Andrew Jackson was outraged over a Supreme Court decision striking down a Georgia law regulating the entry of white people on Native American lands. Jackson stated, “John Marshall has made the decision; now let him enforce it.” Jackson viewed the Supreme Court’s decision as interfering with his Executive power to remove Indians from their land. Jackson’s contempt for the rule of law eventually led to the horrifying Trail of Tears.

An open southern border seems to be as crucial to President Biden as acquiring Indian lands was to President Jackson. What happens if the Supreme Court orders the Biden administration to enforce the MPP policy and Biden tells the court, “You made the decision; now you enforce it?”

There are very few workable options to make Biden enforce the law.

Congress could appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars to detain the millions of illegal immigrants until their asylum dates. Is it unlikely that Congress would appropriate such amounts since the Biden administration has refused to complete the most straightforward task, building the border wall.

A Republican House of Representatives in 2023 could impeach Biden; however, it is unlikely the Senate will have 67 votes to convict him. Besides being a footnote in history, the impeachment will not result in any serious border enforcement.

Congress could cut off funds to the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”). Still, Biden would veto such an effort, and it is unlikely that Congress can override the President’s veto.

Conversely, one House of Congress could refuse to appropriate any funds for DHS operations. This situation is unlikely since it would eliminate all border protection.

A real politick option would be for one House of Congress to refuse to provide any funding for an agency desperately desired by Biden’s allies, such as the Department of Education. Withholding these funds might bring the Biden administration to the negotiating table to ensure his most significant contributor, the teachers union, continues its control over American education. It is unlikely, however; that the Republicans have the courage to enter such a high-stakes negotiation.

A more practical option might be for citizens injured by the administration’s actions to seek compensation under section 1985 (c) of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. They would allege that the president and the Border Patrol conspired to act illegally and such conduct deprived them of their right to equal protection of the law.

Federal immigration law requires the President and the Border Patrol to prevent persons and goods from illegally entering the U.S. and harming the nation’s security. Since the start of the Biden administration, citizens have complained of the harm caused by its failure to secure the border, a violation of Biden’s constitutional duty to  “Take Care” that the laws be faithfully executed.

The federal government’s defenses of sovereign immunity, (the government can do no wrong), and that it operates as one entity so there cannot be a conspiracy, usually prevail. In the civil rights context, the situation is different when the government deprives citizens of their constitutional rights. Simply, the courts have recognized some limits on the immunity given to government corruption.

In a civil rights context, “… when execution of a government’s policy or custom,” is an official policy that inflicts an injury, the government is liable for the harm. If Biden refuses to obey the court’s order, and the Border Patrol follows Biden’s illegal orders the two entities are conspiring to violate U.S. policy.  The conspiracy deprives those harmed of their right to the equal protection of the law; e.g., intentionally allowing into the U.S. drug dealers, sex traffickers, and terrorists who harm Americans.

For far too long, citizens have lacked remedies when injured by the joint illegal conduct of the Executive and the agencies following illegal government orders. Other examples help illustrate this point: the IRS  targeting the tax returns of conservative groups and the FBI filing false FISA applications to spy on citizens.

The general remedy of injunctive relief is usually a day late and of no compensatory value. Federal apologies for violating the civil rights of citizens are cheap. Seeking monetary damages under the Civil Rights laws against the federal agencies that intentionally implement illegal government policy may be the best mechanism for citizens to uncover the scope of any unlawful activity and be compensated for their injury.

Image: TLR compilation. Biden image by Gage Skidmore.

The post Biden v. TX: Will Biden Obey the Supreme Court? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

The legislators representing these “drop-point” areas claim the towns do not have the resources to care for the illegals. Some towns do not even have hospitals. Members of Congress have asked DHS to set out its legal authority for its actions, but there is no response. Most unfortunate, there does not appear to be any federal funding for the impacted communities.

The DHS’s illegal alien dumping appears to conflict with most requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act and issued regulations, such as failure to perform background checks, admitting inadmissible undocumented immigrants having health concerns, criminal convictions, and public charges. The standard remedy, Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) or Constitutional challenges by these local communities, requires money and years of procedural wrangling, which they cannot afford. Meanwhile, these communities must assume the costs of DHS actions.

One possible way to quickly resolve the controversy may be to dust off the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (“UMRA”), a law intended to end the imposition of federal mandates on local communities without full consideration of the unfunded costs imposed on them.

Unfortunately, UMRA, a densely written, procedurally complex statute of great promise but suffering decades of avoidance and disappointing performance, is seldom used. For illegal immigration, however, there may be creative ways for impacted communities and their members of Congress to force an UMRA review.

A “Federal intergovernmental mandate” is a defined term under UMRA. It includes any federal regulation that imposes an enforceable duty on state, local or tribal governments that reduces or eliminates reimbursements to those governments for the net cost associated with illegal, deportable, and excludable aliens, including court-mandated expenses related to health care, education, or criminal justice.

DHS will likely argue its dumping of illegal aliens is not a regulation since it was not proposed as a regulation. DHS’s actions, (failure to apply existing regulations), however, de facto repeals, without notice or comment, a comprehensive set of issued regulations covering every aspect of how aliens can legally immigrate into the U.S. and the categories of aliens eligible and ineligible for entry. Even repeals of regulations must go through notice and comment rulemaking.

Even assuming the DHS has emergency authority to change its regulations immediately, compliance with UMRA still mandates that the DHS follow specific procedures when imposing unfunded mandates on local communities. UMRA requires consultation with the local governments and an assessment of the anticipated costs/benefits of the unfunded mandate.

Since DHS ignored the use of the APA in changing its regulations and refuses to disclose the legal authority for its actions, it is unlikely DHS prepared a cost/benefit assessment. While lawsuits are expensive, under UMRA however, the legal dispute is much simpler. There are only two questions before the court. Did DHS impose unfunded mandates on local communities? Did DHS undertake an UMRA cost/benefit assessment? There are no complex administrative law issues.

If DHS imposed unfunded mandates and failed to perform the cost/benefit assessment, the court can compel it to perform the assessment.

If a court orders consultation with local communities and preparation of the cost/benefit assessment, Congress will have the needed cost/benefit information to use the Legislative Accountability and Reform provisions of UMRA creatively. These provisions allow members of Congress to raise a Point of Order to legislation funding DHS operations that impose unfunded mandates on local communities by moving illegal aliens into those communities.

Specifically, the Point of Order applies when the appropriation increases the direct costs to the local government. If an appropriations bill funds DHS activities to move illegal aliens from the border to small communities, e.g., transportation, room and board, cell phones, clothing, the Point of Order would be valid since those DHS activities directly impose unfunded mandates on local communities by its “illegal dumping.”

UMRA gives significant power to courts and legislators to ensure agencies fully understand the impacts of their mandates on local communities before imposing them. Once the costs are identified in a UMRA assessment, members of Congress, by raising a Point of Order, may block DHS appropriations unless there is budget authority equal to the costs of the mandate. Since agencies are always in need of appropriations, every member of Congress has leverage over DHS through the appropriations process.

Image: Office of the Inspector General/DHS

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Virtue signaling is destructive of the rule of law. It is designed to make government sound serious, good, thoughtful, reliable, and principled but when the virtues are not implemented, government looks hypocritical, deceitful, unreliable, and untrustworthy. The American public is much smarter than its politicians. Pew Research finds 64% of Americans believe a lack of trust in the federal government is a reason for it being unable to solve important issues.

While there are thousands of examples of the disconnect between what is enacted into law and the real-world actions of the U.S., the laws outlawing child labor, forced labor, and illegal immigration are excellent examples of the disconnect and a lack of trust in government.

Child Labor

Virtue Signaling – Congress signaled great virtue when it enacted Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to prohibit the importation of goods made, in whole or in part, by the forced labor of children. With more virtue signaling, Congress in 2005 assigned the Department of Labor the responsibility to reduce the likelihood of these goods being imported into the U.S.

Abuse of Rule of Law – Unfortunately, still today, many of our most in-demand products are made by the forced labor children and are being imported into the U.S. Wise step, a recruitment software company, in an article, identifies the 28 companies that still use child labor. Most of the companies are top brand names but more interesting is the breadth of industries still using child labor to produce products for American consumers. The industries include chocolate making, food production, fashion, apparel, sneakers, toys, and cell phones.

Even more cynical, is that many of the companies using child labor to make their products gave countless millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter (BLM), to appear righteous while governments allowed BLM to burn cities without punishment. Simply, corporate America knows how to buy protection from radical groups and the federal government.

Forced Labor

Virtue Signaling – Forced labor, commonly referred to as “slave labor,” is defined by section 307 as “All work…extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty for its non-performance which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily.” While the statute prohibits any product mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part, by forced labor, it has little enforcement due to a clause that allows the U.S. to waive enforcement if it lacks the resources (i.e., money) to conduct inspections or the products are no longer made in the U.S. but wanted by consumers.

Abuse of Rule of Law – As to the lack of inspection resources, Congress merely fails to appropriate the money for inspections. As to products no longer made in this country, U.S. business decades ago exported its manufacturing base to China to acquire cheap labor.

Having two self-fulfilling reasons for not enforcing prohibitions on forced labor, the federal government rarely used its section 307 enforcement powers; only 60-75 times between 1930 and mid-1980 and 27 times between 1991-1995. There were no enforcement actions between 2000-2016. In 2016 Congress removed the exemption clause. Since then, there have been 16 enforcement actions.

Even more cynical, the federal government and corporate America feign abhorrence with the Chinese use of Uighur slave labor, but under the guise of capitalism and free enterprise, we allow the largest companies in the U.S. to have their products manufactured by Uighur labor. The federal government is pleased to allow these products into the U.S.

Immigration and Illegal Immigration

Virtue Signaling – Congress enacted a comprehensive Immigration and Nationality Act that is several hundred pages long. It addresses every aspect of immigration from application forms, different aspects of travel for the different status categories, to visas and foreign entry, to detention procedures. Literally, every step of the legal immigration process is established so that foreign citizens can apply to the United States for citizenship or permission to work. The law is supplemented by regulations, policy manuals, memoranda and Handbooks, comprising tens of thousands of pages on how to become a U.S. citizen. It appears nothing is left unsaid by the bureaucrats.

Congress has been legislating on citizenship issues since 1790. While Congress has legislated many inconsistent policies over the years, e.g., exclusion at various times of Chinese, Communists, idiots, alcoholics, preferences for nurses at times, and countless other categories of exclusion or preference, it has always had detailed policies allowing for legal entry into the country.

Abuse of Rule of Law – Notwithstanding the countless immigration policies and procedures for legally entering the U.S., President Biden, without any change in law, promised good treatment to undocumented immigrants crossing our Southern border, in violation of U.S. law. He also reinstituted catch and release policy in which these unauthorized citizens are caught and immediately released into the interior of the country, making it impossible to ever find them. For all intents and purposes, these undocumented people are now permanent residents of the U.S., they just lack paperwork.

In the month of March 2021, alone, there were 172,000 persons in this category. Estimates are that 6000 people, per day, are now entering, the U.S., the highest in our history, without complying with our immigration laws.

Even more cynical, the U.S. has had a war on drugs since 1971 when Richard Nixon was president. The U.S., with the marijuana industry booming in almost half the U.S., still has 40,000 individuals in prison for marijuana offenses. Yet, the U.S. has an open southern border that allows drug cartel members, and gang members with indentured servants, sex traffickers, and drug dealers to freely enter.

The Rule of Law Is a Fiction in the U.S.

The United States continuously signals virtue claiming to be a Rule of Law society. We have comprehensive laws regulating or prohibiting child labor, indentured servitude, sex trafficking, drug smuggling, and have a process for legal entry into the country. Actually, the U.S. has tens of thousands of laws that regulate most aspects of society, from low-flush toilets to the ethical treatment of animals. The U.S. has so many laws, no one can even estimate a number. In short, we constantly signal our virtue to the world. The U.S. has made almost 5000 individual actions criminal offenses. The U.S. has more people in jail than any country in the world; U.S. 2,121,600; China 1,710,000 and Russia 511,030.

Unfortunately, we have a government that randomly and arbitrarily implements the laws of the nation. We have a big business community that regularly skits the law for extra profit. We openly allow illegal entry into our country of people who are the worst of the lawbreakers, i.e., drug dealers, cartel operators, sex traffickers, and those who enslave others.

The U.S. government should be honest with the laws it enacts. It could legalize certain drugs and prostitution. It could increase the number of work permits for foreign labor. Taking these steps would make it easier to administer the remaining laws. But the U.S. won’t do any of this. In the end, the federal government wants a massive number of laws so it can prosecute, regulate or eliminate those it finds objectionable.

Tacitus warned us that “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” By that definition, the U.S. is the most corrupt nation on earth.

Congress needs to eliminate all unnecessary laws and enforce the necessary laws. In more colloquial language, Congress needs to stop virtue signaling and start being responsible lawmakers. Having reasonable laws that are obeyed is the basis of the rule of law society. It will also engender respect for our institutions. Over time it might even engender respect for Congress.

The post Government Laws Are the Ultimate Form of Virtue Signaling appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Jason Hopkins 

The Trump administration has expanded the “Remain in Mexico” program to include Brazilian nationals, the first non-Spanish speaking people placed under the program.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Wednesday that it expanded the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” to include Brazilian nationals. The directive has primarily focused on Spanish-speaking Central Americans; however, the number of Brazilians showing up at the U.S. southern border, DHS noted, has tripled in the last year.

The Remain in Mexico program, which the Trump administration rolled out in January 2019, requires foreign nationals seeking U.S. asylum at the southern border to wait in Mexico for the entire duration of their court proceedings. This policy largely eliminates the possibility of “catch and release,” where migrants claim asylum in the U.S and authorities release them into the interior of the country on the premise that they will return for their court date.

The Trump administration — including every top immigration official — has touted Remain in Mexico as an essential tool in stopping the flow of illegal immigration at the border. Border Patrol apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have, in fact, dropped precipitously in the past seven months.

The announcement that the administration would subject Brazilians to the program fell on the one-year anniversary of the first individual required to wait in Mexico under Migrant Protection Protocols.

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of DHS, hailed the expansion as a “BIG” move.

“Today is the one-year anniversary of the first person actually waiting in Mexico under MPP, aka, the remain in Mexico program. And on today’s 1 year anniversary, the first Brazilians were returned to Mexico to await their U.S. Immigration hearing. Adding Brazilians is BIG!” Cuccinelli tweeted Wednesday.

“Illegal Brazilians coming across our border have tripled in the last year! So having an outlet for them to wait outside the U.S. for their immigration hearings is super-helpful! (thank you Mexico!) This is yet another extension of the many options developed under [President Donald Trump],” he added.

Remain in Mexico has prevented a high rate of inadmissible asylum seekers from entering the U.S.

Officials have placed over 50,000 foreign nationals under the program, and immigration judges have granted a small fraction asylum. The small acceptance rate is a reflection of the high number of asylum seekers who are not actually in need of protected status, but are simply economic migrants hoping to land employment in the U.S.

This is not the only area where Mexico has proven to be an exceptional partner in managing illegal immigration. The Mexican government has gone to great lengths to prevent a migrant caravan from passing though its territory in order to reach the U.S. border, marking a sharp break its past engagements with migrant caravans.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Jason Hopkins 

Worksite immigration enforcement actions have increased dramatically under the Trump administration, part of the White House’s crackdown on incentives that drive illegal immigration into the country.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) investigative unit opened four times as many worksite inquires in the 2019 fiscal year than it did at the end of former President Barack Obama’s time in office, according to data obtained by the Wall Street Journal. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations opened a total of 6,812 in the last fiscal year, a sharp increase from the 1,701 in the 2016 fiscal year.

These worksite enforcement actions target non-citizens who are working in the U.S. illegally and their employers. The increase in inquiries has also led to more apprehensions, with the agency making 2,048 administrative arrests in fiscal year 2019, up from about 500 from the previous year.

ICE has broken records in its recent crackdown on illegal employment of foreign nationals. The agency, for example, raided seven different Mississippi food processing plants in August, leading to the arrest of 680 illegal aliens. The bust marked the single largest such raid in U.S. history.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which serves as the investigative branch of ICE, is behind numerous high-profile arrests and raids that extend well beyond immigration-related activity.

HSI agents in fiscal year 2019 made 3,771 criminal arrests relating to child exploitation, an 18% increase from the year before. ICE’s investigative division in November officially opened the Angel Watch Center in Fairfax, Virginia, which is dedicated to the prevention of child sex tourism — the act of traveling internationally for the purpose of sexually exploiting minors.

During the 2019 fiscal year — which began on Oct. 1, 2018 and ended on Sept. 30 — criminal arrests by ICE agents totaled 37,547, a 10% uptick from the previous fiscal year, according to WSJ data. These arrests included drug-related and human trafficking crimes, and also includes immigration-related crimes such as employment of illegal aliens.

While President Donald Trump has made immigration enforcement a focus of his administration, the demographics of the current border crisis have made it more difficult for arrests to lead to deportations.

For months, the vast majority of those reaching the U.S.-Mexico border were migrant family units from Central America, not single, male adults from Mexico. Foreign nationals from noncontiguous countries are more difficult to process and remove from the country because of current U.S. immigration laws. The result has been record detention of illegal aliens, but still far fewer deportations than seen under the Obama administration.

Around 1.8 million foreign nationals were deported from the country in the first three years of the Obama administration. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has deported fewer than 800,000 in the same time period. Detainment, however, has reached record levels, with roughly 50,000 individuals jailed on any given day last year by ICE, the biggest detainment number in the government’s history.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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“La Migra,” however, is generally understood to mean ICE, or the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, in much of Latin American culture within the US.

Watch below:

The rally and protest come amid President Trump’s recent U.S. Supreme Court victory which grants funding for the border wall. Democratic candidates also recently took the stage at the second scheduled debate and endorsed giving illegal immigrants free healthcare and discussed decriminalizing illegal immigration.

Immigration and ICE have become flashpoint issues ahead of the 2020 election over which voters and grassroots activists have passionate stances.

A group bearing the name “Chinga La Migra,” the same words the protestors raise in the video, is one of those groups.

Chinga la Migra describes themselves as “a multi-city organizing tour and web series spearheaded by Mijente and grassroots local organizations.” Furthermore, their website states “Chinga la Migra is a battle cry. In the time of Trump, we know we’ve got to play defense, but we’re going to be real [sic] offensive doing it.”

It is currently unknown whether the protestors are involved with the organization or its parent organization, Mijente, which is an online progressive grassroots organizing hub for Latino and Chicano peoples, according to her biography on Womensmediacenter.com.

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Jason Hopkins on April 24, 2019

The acting secretary of Homeland Security pushed back on the narrative that President Donald Trump’s border wall is not being built, pointing out that construction has actually been going at an aggressive pace.

“So normally for a federal project of this scope, from the time you get funded to starting, it’s over two years,” Kevin McAleenan said Tuesday on Fox News. “We’ve already built the [fiscal year] 2017 funding in less than two years. That shows how aggressively we’re moving out on this.”

McAleenan — who became acting DHS secretary earlier in April after Kirstjen Nielsen resigned — has been tapped by the Trump administration to lead the agency at a time when the U.S. southern border is experiencing record numbers of illegal migrants, many of them Central American families.

Trump has been forced to fight tooth-and-nail with congressional Democrats over border wall funding. The federal government experienced its longest shutdown in U.S. history as the two camps fought over how much money could be appropriated for wall construction. The White House is being sued after it declared a national emergency on the southern border, allowing it to allocate billions more in funding.

The new DHS leader said more military troops are needed to help alleviate the crisis.

“They helped us repel two attempts by a caravan to enter the United States by helping us fortify ports of entry,” he said to host Dana Perino, adding that their presence has helped free up border agents to enforce immigration laws. “They’re going to be helping us build the wall, too.”

McAleenan called for an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws, but cited two areas specifically that are in dire need of reform. Homeland Security agents, he argued, need to be able to detain migrant families together and also have ability to repatriate migrant children from noncontiguous countries.

The requests closely mirrored what former DHS secretary Nielsen asked of Congress in March. The since-axed secretary sent a letter to lawmakers asking them for legislative fixes that would address a number of issues that have contributed to the immigration crisis. Namely, current immigration laws are not well-equipped to handle the massive number of family units from noncontiguous countries, which has resulted in overcrowded detention centers across the country.

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Brad Sylvester on December 7, 2018

A meme posted on Facebook by David J. Harris Jr., who has nearly 500,000 followers and often posts conservative content, claims that a quote expressing support for stricter border control is attributable to former President Barack Obama. The meme was shared almost 20,000 times.

“Those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws,” reads the quote.

Verdict: True

Then-Sen. Obama made the statement while speaking about immigration on the Senate floor on April 3, 2006. While Obama spoke positively of immigrants, he was critical of illegal immigration.

Fact Check:

At the time of the speech, the Senate was debating the proposed Securing America’s Borders Act, a bill that would have, among other measures, replaced and expanded fencing along the southern border. A number of senators spoke about the bill and immigration in general, including Obama, then a senator from Illinois.

“Those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we cannot allow people to pour into the U.S. undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws,” he said in the speech.

His actual words were slightly different than the quote attributed to him in the meme – Obama never used the word “simply,” and he abbreviated “United States” during his remarks.

Obama continued his speech by pointing out that “while security might start at our borders, it doesn’t end there,” pivoting to a pitch for immigration reform that addressed illegal immigrants already in the country. They must “acknowledge that breaking our immigration laws was wrong” and pay a penalty before being granted a path to citizenship, argued Obama in the speech.

The bill ultimately died in the Senate.

Obama made similar statements on several other occasions. In a 2005 joint press conference with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, he advocated for bipartisan immigration reform, at one point stating that “we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States, undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”

In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama expressed concern over the economic impact of immigration.

“The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century,” he wrote. “If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole – especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan – it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”

Obama also voted in favor of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, a bill that authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of fencing and barriers along the southern border. The bill passed in the Senate in a 80 to 19 vote and was signed into law that October by President George W. Bush.

Even as Obama opposed illegal immigration, he said at the time that immigrant communities “enrich our cities” and spoke positively about having an “open nation.”

In should be noted that in 2005 and 2006, political opinions on immigration were quite different than they are today. Border security could be considered a bipartisan issue in those days, garnering significant support from both Republicans and Democrats. In 2006, about 40 percent of Democrats were in favor of building a barrier along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, as opposed to less than 10 percent in 2017, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.

As president, Obama left a mixed legacy on immigration.

On one hand, he cracked down on illegal immigration, removing around 3 million illegal immigrants from the country, more than any other president.

Yet on the other hand, he crafted and implemented Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a program that gave quasi-legal status and work permits to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

A couple years later, Obama attempted to use another executive action to expand protections for illegal immigrants by implementing Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, also known as DAPA. The program would have protected millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, but it was challenged and ultimately defeated in the courts.

Obama’s rhetoric towards immigration was generally positive during his presidency.

“We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants,” he said in a 2013 public address. “The promise we find in those who come from every corner of the globe has always been one of our greatest strengths. It’s kept our workforce vibrant and dynamic.”

Nonetheless, as Obama continued to push for immigration reform as president, there were still echoes of his earlier remarks.

“Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws,” Obama said while announcing DAPA in 2014. “We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect that those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded.”

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A San Francisco jury found the illegal immigrant accused of killing Kate Steinle not guilty of murder Thursday, a stunning result in a case that ignited a nationwide debate over illegal immigration and sanctuary cities.

After five days of jury deliberation, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 54, was found not guilty on all counts, except for felony possession of a weapon. Zarate faced a charge of second-degree murder, but jurors were also instructed to consider first-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

At trial, Zarate admitted to firing the shot that killed Steinle, but the defense contended that the gun “went off” in his hands after he found it underneath a bench on the San Francisco pier. A ballistics investigation into the shooting revealed that the bullet skipped off the pavement before hitting Steinle, lending some credence to Zarate’s claims that the shooting was an accident.

The prosecution countered with evidence that the firearm, which had been stolen from a federal agent, required a firm pull of the trigger to fire, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A forensics investigator also testified that Zarate had to have pointed the gun in Steinle’s direction for the bullet to follow the path it did.

A Mexican national, Zarate was a seven-time convicted felon and had been deported from the U.S. five times before the shooting. Just months before the shooting, Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged an immigration detainer for Zarate with the San Francisco sheriff’s office, which declined the request.

In an interview with local media, Zarate said he had made his way to San Francisco because he knew he would be less likely to be deported because of the city’s sanctuary policies. The incident sparked a nationwide debate over sanctuary cities and later became a central theme of President Donald Trump’s campaign.

This summer, the House of Representatives passed a bill known as Kate’s Law, which would toughen penalties for illegal immigrants who have been deported and then illegally re-enter the country. The bill has not been taken up in the Senate.

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By Kody Fairfield

Controversial conservative, and self described one issue voter Ann Coulter has been a huge cheerleader for President Donald Trump for a very long time, but she now appears to be at her wits end with the man she once said she worshipped like the  “people of North Korea worship their Dear Leader – blind loyalty.”

See, Coulter’s main issue, and the one she describes as her only issue, is illegal immigration into the United States, making her supposedly the second largest proponent of the “Build the Wall” movement, behind only the President himself. However, the President’s inaction, along with his appearance to be softening on the issue is pushing one of his largest cheerleaders away from him.

In an interview with the Daily Caller (theDC), Coulter was asked about how she felt about the President given the lack of a wall and the staying of “Obama’s amnesties.”

“If he doesn’t keep his promises I’m out. This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues.”

Coulter even said she agreed with friend her “friend” Frank Bruni’s op-ed in The New York Times, which took heavy swings at Trump’s boasted about negotiation skills.

“Where is the great negotiation? Where is the bull in the china shop we wanted? That budget the Republicans pushed through was like a practical joke… Did we win anything? And this is the great negotiator?” she said.

The interview then turned to the apocalyptic remarks Coulter has made regarding the end of the US and a lack of border wall, to which she said:

“Trump was our last shot. I kind of thought it was Romney, and then lo and behold like a miracle Trump comes along. I still believe in Trumpism. I have no regrets for ferociously supporting him. What choice did we have?” Coulter explained.

“It’s not like I’m out yet, but boy, things don’t look good. I’ve said to other people, “It’s as if we’re in Chicago and Trump tells us he’s going to get us to LA in six days. But for the first three days we are driving towards New York. Yes, it is true he can still turn around and get us to LA in three days, but I’m a little nervous.”

Coulter was then asked by theDC if, in the circumstance that she was wrong about Trump, she would apologize to the Never Trumpers:

“I don’t apologize for supporting Trump. He said all the right things and nobody else would even say it. I suppose it’s possible that another politician who really meant it would come along. There’s Kris Kobach, Tom Cotton, Jeff Sessions…there are probably a handful of politicians.”

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