The Division of Homeland Safety’s “sanctuary jurisdiction record” has extra holes than the plot for the newest “Mission Unattainable” movie.
All it is advisable to find out about its accuracy is how my native Orange County fared.
The one O.C. metropolis on the record is Huntington Seaside — you already know, the ‘burb with an all-Republican council that’s suing California for being a sanctuary state, declared itself a “non-sanctuary” group in January and and plans to put a plaque outdoors town’s principal library with an acrostic “MAGA” message.
Lacking from the record? Santa Ana, lengthy synonymous with undocumented immigrants, which declared itself a sanctuary metropolis all the best way again in 2016 and has a deportation protection fund for residents.
Extra laughable errors: Livingston, the primary metropolis within the Central Valley to declare itself a sanctuary for immigrants in 2017, isn’t on the record. But Santee in San Diego County, so infamous for its racism that individuals nonetheless name it “Klantee,” is.
There’s even Represa. Ever heard of it? Me, neither. Seems it’s not a metropolis however the title of the submit workplace for 2 locations not precisely often called sanctuaries: Folsom State Jail and California State Jail, Sacramento.
Inside hours of his inauguration, Donald Trump signed an government order tellingly titled “Defending the American Individuals Towards Invasion” that, amongst different issues, said that sanctuary jurisdictions ought to not obtain federal funds.
However the Could 29 record laying out the jurisdictions which can be supposedly topic to the penalty was so flawed that it was taken off the Homeland Safety web site inside days. It’s nonetheless not again up. The trouble appeared cobbled collectively by somebody who typed “sanctuary” and a metropolis’s title into Google and swallowed regardless of the AI spat up with out even bothering to cross-check with Wikipedia.
Trump’s opponents are already depicting this fiasco as emblematic of an administration that likes to shoot itself within the foot, then put the bloody foot in its mouth. However it’s even worse than that.
The record reveals how blinded by fury the Trump administration is about unlawful immigration. There isn’t a mistake too massive or too small for Trump to forgive, so long as it’s within the title of deportation and border partitions. The president’s obsession with tying all of this nation’s actual and imagined ills to newcomers jogs my memory of Cato the Elder, the Roman Republic politician well-known for allegedly saying “Carthage have to be destroyed” on the finish of all his speeches, irrespective of the subject.
That’s why the pushback by politicians in opposition to Homeland Safety’s massive, stunning boo-boo has been fast — and hilarious.
Huntington Seaside Mayor Pat Burns listens to audio system focus on town’s plan to make Huntington Seaside “a non-sanctuary metropolis for unlawful immigration” throughout a Metropolis Council assembly in January
(James Carbone)
Huntington Seaside Mayor Pat Burns appeared on KCAL Information to declare that Surf Metropolis’s inclusion was “pure negligence” whereas holding a small white bust of Donald Trump the best way a toddler clings to its blankey.
Vista Mayor John Franklin, in the meantime, was on town council that voted in 2018 to help the Trump administration’s unsuccessful lawsuit in opposition to California’s sanctuary state legislation. He advised ABC 10News San Diego that he thought Vista made the record as a result of “one other metropolis within the county that bears an analogous title to ours … might have, and I haven’t confirmed it but, adopted a sanctuary coverage.”
Dude, say town’s title: Chula Vista, a far cooler, muy Latino city nearer to the U.S.-Mexico border than Vista is. It’s additionally on the record and isn’t a sanctuary metropolis, both.
On the opposite finish of the political spectrum, Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) advised the Voice of OC that he lately suggested Santa Ana officers to “preserve their head low” and never make an enormous deal about their sanctuary metropolis standing — as if hiding beneath a desk, like a “Scooby Doo” caper, will in some way save town from the Trump administration’s haphazard hammer.
Immigration, greater than some other a part of Trump’s agenda, exemplifies the Silicon Valley cliché of transferring quick and breaking issues. His administration has deported individuals by mistake and given the center finger to judges who get them organized introduced again. Trump officers are actually delivery immigrants to international locations they don’t have any ties to, and shrugging their shoulders. Immigration brokers are attempting to apprehend individuals in locations lengthy thought of off-limits, like colleges and locations of worship.
And but, this nonetheless isn’t sufficient for Trump.
Deportation charges are rising, however nonetheless to not the degrees seen in some years of the Biden and Obama administrations, and never even near Operation Wetback, the Eisenhower-era program that deported over 1,000,000 Mexican nationals. Trump’s deportation dream staff — Homeland Safety head Kristi Noem, border czar Tom Homan and White Home Deputy Chief of Employees Stephen Miller — has berated ICE officers for not doing extra to adjust to Trump’s needs.
The sanctuary record embodies all of this. Who cares if the wreckage entails human lives, or the Structure? The sloppiness is the purpose. The cruelty is the purpose.
Homeland Safety didn’t reply my request to elucidate the issues in its sanctuary jurisdiction record and why it was taken down. As an alternative, a spokesperson emailed a press release saying “the record is being consistently reviewed and might be modified at any time and shall be up to date usually.” The choice whether or not to incorporate a spot, the assertion mentioned, “relies on the analysis of quite a few elements.”
Besides the reality, it appears.
Let’s snicker on the absurd errors whereas we will. Actually, how pendejo are you able to be to assume that Huntington Seaside is pleasant to undocumented immigrants however Santa Ana isn’t? Let’s snicker whereas we will, as a result of issues are going to get a lot worse earlier than they get higher.
