In Phoenix this past week, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton heard opening arguments in a motion to grant a preliminary injunction to block the implementation of Arizona's new law aimed at illegal immigration. The new law will take effect on July 29.
Next week the same judge will hear arguments in two other lawsuits against the Arizona law, one brought by Obama's Justice Department and the other by the ACLU and two open-borders groups.
The argument of the Obama lawsuit is that Arizona has invaded legal territory reserved exclusively for the federal government – enforcement of federal immigration law. But, oddly, the shallowness and hypocrisy of this claim was laid bare by none other than Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a statement in Laredo, Texas, on the same day as the court hearing in Phoenix.
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Napolitano announced that the Department of Homeland Security is releasing $51 million in grants to Arizona and several other states as part of Operation Stonegarden, a program began in 2006 to help local law enforcement deal with crime in border regions. Arizona will get $13.8 million, Texas $17.5 million and California $12.2 million.
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Consider the significance of the fact that these federal funds are administered by Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice. The federal government – authorized by an act of Congress – is admitting local law enforcement is dramatically impacted by open borders and needs help. So, DHS now offers financial assistance to enable local law enforcement to pay overtime and purchase needed equipment such as night-vision goggles, so local police can better cope with the byproducts of federal open-borders policies.
Lost in this scramble for federal dollars is the lesson about the relationship between local crime rates and border security. When the Border Patrol in Del Rio, Texas, and Yuma, Arizona, implemented Operation Zero Tolerance and started prosecuting and putting in jail all the people apprehended crossing the border illegally – instead of the traditional practice of merely pushing them back into Mexico without any jail time – not only did border crossings drop by 70 percent, local crime in those border towns dropped dramatically.
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Evidently, it is all right to spend federal dollars to help local law enforcement cope with crime created by federal open-borders policies, but it is not all right for a state to protect itself against those same criminals by enforcing federal immigration law and asking the federal government to deport persons arrested for local crime – which is what the Arizona law tries to do.
It is now clear that the Obama administration and Attorney General Holder have declared war on Arizona's attempts to protect itself from the border invasion. Obama will not protect Arizona's borders, and Holder wants to prevent Arizona from protecting itself.
These actions are undertaken despite overwhelming public support for border security and Arizona's new law. Poll after poll show public opinion solidly behind Arizona's new law and Arizona's request for 3,000 National Guard troops. Yet, Obama, Holder and Napolitano persist in their open-borders policies.
The message here is clear: Obama is so ideologically committed to open borders that he does not care what the people of Arizona think. In fact, he does not care what the people of America think.
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Undoubtedly, the residents of Arizona are more aware than the denizens of Washington, D.C., or the professors at the University of Chicago of the high price they have been paying for federal malfeasance and Democrat hypocrisy. Phoenix residents and the Phoenix police union are aware that four of the last seven police officers killed in the line of duty were killed by illegal aliens. Maybe this little factoid does not count for much in the deliberations by Eric Holder's minions at the Department of Justice, but it weighs heavily on the minds and hearts of Arizonans.
If the Arizona law is struck down in federal court, and if similar efforts by Arizona lawmakers aimed at protection against foreign invasion are blocked, there will be consequences that are very unpleasant. When lawful authority cannot or will not protect citizens against violence and invasion, at some point "vigilante justice" will fill the gap, and it likely will not be limited to the "observe and report" rules of engagement followed by the original Minutemen patriots of 2005.
It is quite conceivable that President Obama has already decided to not seek a second term in 2012 and therefore can afford to ignore public opinion and "do the right thing" by his own compass – not only on border security and amnesty but all across the board. The problem for the nation is that his compass is set on the goal of a socialist America within a new international socialist order where borders – and the Constitution's limits on his power – are of little consequence.
