The Patriot Post® · Defining Deportation Criteria Down

“Drunk driving that does not lead to any other negative outcome, I could define as that.” —NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio explaining why illegals who commit “minor” crimes will be shielded from deportation.

“Rather than tracking down violent criminals and drug dealers, ICE is spending its energy deporting a woman with two American children who has lived here for more than two decades and poses a threat to nobody.” —Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton expressing his outrage over the deportation of Garcia de Rayos, an illegal alien convicted of felony criminal impersonation.

Remember when the American Left used to insist that deporting illegals whose only offense was being in the United States illegally was an affront to decency? As two Democrat mayors indicate, the bar has been lowered substantially. In fact, de Blasio studiously avoided the other component of reporter Jake Tapper’s question, namely whether or not grand larceny was sufficient grounds for deportation. Perhaps that’s because a 2014 sanctuary city law passed by the City Council and signed by de Blasio prevents the transfer of an illegal to ICE without a warrant, unless the suspect is on a terrorism watch list or has committed a violent felony.

NYPD Lt. Chris Czark, who insisted the city was “acting within guidelines and the scope of the law,” nonetheless revealed the utter lunacy of such a policy, noting that while “you could be detained for any felony” prior to the law’s implementation, now it’s only “certain felonies” that precipitate cooperation with federal immigration officials.

Not on that list? Crimes like sexual abuse, money-laundering, bribery, grand larceny and drunk driving. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s response to critics who challenge the assertion that the law makes the city safe? “Any suggestion that our common-sense law does otherwise is nothing more than cheap political posturing,” huffed spokeswoman Amy Varghese.

New York progressives are hardly outliers. Alisa Wellek, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project, reveals the mindset that animates the Left’s casual relationship with the Rule of Law regarding illegal aliens. “We see a ton of people deported for misdemeanors, probation violations, petty theft, shoplifting,” she states. “The federal government has these really overreaching laws on the books, laws that are very unforgiving for anyone who’s had any contact with the criminal justice system — even if you’ve never served a day in jail.”

The headline of a Denver Post editorial is equally absurd. “Trump should deport criminals, but let’s be reasonable,” it states. The editorial board offers up the boilerplate progressive rationale that crime thrives “in an environment where the threat of deportation prevents victims and witnesses from contacting law enforcement or even from seeking emergency medical attention.” So the paper concludes that Trump, who has “demonized immigrants in his climb to the White House,” should “reconsider his inexorable march to mass deportation.”

The Atlantic’s J. Weston Phippen is another hand-wringer upset with Trump’s executive order regarding illegals. “There is no priority anymore,” he laments. “The language in the order says that any unauthorized immigrant convicted of any crime can be deported.”

In other words, no illegal convicted of a crime should be deported if that deportation offends progressive sensibilities.

Arrogant and lawless sensibilities. “I can tell you, half of my family would be eligible for deportation under the executive order, because they got a false Social Security card, they got a false identification, they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing AB 60, they got a false green card,” reveals Democrat California Sen. Kevin de León, who justifies this overtly criminal activity by insisting “that’s what you need to survive, to work.” De León has sponsored legislation attempting to establish California as a “sanctuary state,” or as he put it, a “Wall of Justice.”

Genuine justice would require de León’s impeachment for abetting illegal behavior by his own family.

A Fox News affiliate in Georgia punches a giant hole in the Left’s twisted concept of such “justice.” Examining “thousands of public records from Cobb and Gwinnett County jails,” Fox discovered hundreds of examples of illegal alien repeat offenders “with the second crime sometimes even more serious than the first.” Two examples included men first detained for having no driver’s license — but subsequently re-arrested for aggravated child molestation and rape, and cocaine trafficking, respectively.

Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway states the blindingly obvious: “We shouldn’t deal with [illegal aliens] a second time or a third time, or allow them a chance to hurt a citizen.”

Unfortunately, if the ACLU and influential Mexican citizens get their way, many illegals will get the chance to do exactly that. The ACLU has announced plans to create a “rapid response team” aimed at thwarting the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. “This administration is just getting started and we’re anticipating much worse,” said senior attorney Lee Gelernt, comparing Trump’s promises to efforts undertaken by the Obama administration. “His rhetoric is already scaring a lot of people in immigrant communities.”

Not immigrant communities. Illegal immigrant communities.

The ACLU’s sentiment is shared by “Monarca,” a group of Mexican legislators, governors and public figures whose name is the Mexican word for a butterfly that migrates throughout North America. Their strategy is straight out of Cloward-Piven: overwhelm the immigration court system until it breaks down. “The backlog in the immigration system is tremendous,” said former Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda. Monarca intends to double or triple the backlog, “until Trump desists in this stupid idea,” Castañeda adds.

The courts are already in chaos with a backlog of more than 500,000 cases. That number that has steadily increased over the last eight years, due to a shortage of immigration judges. The current number of judges is 296, and Human Rights First (HRF) estimates the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the DOJ agency that adjudicates immigration cases, needs to hire 524 immigration judges to eliminate the backlog by 2023.

That’s not soon enough. The Trump administration needs to make the hiring of judges a top priority to counter Monarca’s contemptible strategy, as well as the reality expressed in 2011 by former Miami immigration jurist Mark H. Metcalf. He explained that the current system is “built to fail” because deportation orders “are rarely enforced,” illegals don’t show up for court dates and immigration judges “can’t enforce their own orders.”

The message is clear: Progressives and their media enablers embrace orchestrated anarchy. Orchestrated anarchy that essentially defines criminal deviancy down to the point where leftists demand that people already here illegally be allowed to stay, even if they have committed additional crimes — including “acceptable” felonies. And if these would-be anarchists don’t get their way, they will attempt to crash the court system.

It remains to be seen if the GOP will abide the Left’s “by any means necessary” approach, or stand up for “deplorable” Americans tired of being told they are bigoted or xenophobic because they reject a de facto invasion — and the bastardization of the law necessary to facilitate it.

How this plays out is America’s ultimate litmus test. There is either national sovereignty and the Rule of Law — or there isn’t.