Sean Davis focuses attention on the dangers surrounding the American sanctuary movement.
On July 1, 2015, 32-year-old Kathryn “Kate” Steinle was killed while sightseeing in San Francisco with her father and a family friend. According to federal prosecutors, Steinle was walking on Pier 14, a popular tourist attraction in San Francisco’s Embarcadero area, when she was shot in the back by Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, an illegal immigrant from Mexico with a lengthy criminal record. …
… [W]hat had started as a narrow effort to take care of a small number of needy refugees in a single city developed, after several decades, into a sprawling global industry involving national governments, NGOs, criminal syndicates, and hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars a year. Every institution involved had either a political or an economic incentive to ensure a never-ending flow of migrants into the U.S. Forget vetting. Forget filtering out criminals and drug traffickers. Forget ensuring that only those willing to assimilate into our culture should be admitted into our country. The illegal immigration-industrial complex had become a self-perpetuating machine.
Over the past year-and-a-half, the second Trump administration has reestablished secure borders—without which a country can hardly claim to be a country—and has attempted to begin deporting those who entered illegally during the previous four years. But its efforts have been met at every turn with opposition, often violent, even when it comes to deporting the most dangerous illegal immigrants. And much of this opposition is sanctioned by state and city officials enlisted in the sanctuary movement.
As of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice calculated that twelve states and the District of Columbia—nearly one-quarter of the country—had become sanctuaries for illegal immigration. …
… In a healthy country, the American experiment with the sanctuary movement would be widely recognized as a deadly failure. Sadly, stories like that of Kate Steinle have become commonplace. Not only does the sanctuary movement foment and incentivize illegal immigration, it also shields known violent predators from justice.
