President Trump signed an executive order revising the government’s detention policy for illegal immigrants. His order continues the zero-tolerance policy at the border. 

That means if illegal immigrants attempt to enter the country, with or without children, they will be detained for a court hearing.

But, responding to the firestorm over the last few days regarding the separation of children, the president’s order allows the children of illegal immigrants to remain with their parents while court proceedings continue.

Of course, the media and the liberal politicians who have been screaming about child separations are now cheering the president, right? Wrong. 

House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi and other leftists are now screaming that the new policy detains families. Pelosi blasted the president’s order, saying:

“The president’s executive order seeks to replace one form of child abuse with another. Instead of protecting traumatized children, the president has directed his attorney general to pave the way for the long-term incarceration of families in prison-like conditions.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) condemned the new policy as “a handcuffs-for-all strategy." 

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said, "Now we’re going to go from babies in cages to babies with their mommies in cages.”

This is pure demagoguery!

There are only two options, folks. You either treat illegal immigration as if it is illegal, which means you detain people, or you don’t, which means you let them go. And clearly Democrats don’t want to detain anyone for any reason. 

They want open borders. Period.

They want everyone released into the country while they wait for their court hearings. But we know from past experience that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants ordered to appear before the courts do not show up.

This is not about the children. Democrats are using children as human shields for their open-borders policy. And at the same time, the Left is demonizing the brave men and women of ICE and the Border Patrol.

Year by year, the Left is losing blocs of voters. It is attempting to replace those voters with immigrants, many of them single mothers, who will be reliable voters for the Democrat Party when they become citizens.

No matter what the president does in the name of compassion, the Left will attack him because it will settle for nothing less than 100% “catch and release” until the job of fundamentally transforming America is finished.

Loony Legislation

Here’s proof of just how extreme the Democrat Party has become on the issue of immigration. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has introduced a bill that essentially codifies the “catch and release” policy.

The bill states that federal agents from the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice or Health and Human Services are prohibited from removing a child who has no permanent immigration status from his or her parent or legal guardian within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Guess what? About 200 million people live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. So this legislation puts two-thirds of the country off-limits from immigration enforcement.

Moreover, one analysis finds that it is so badly written that it may apply to virtually everyone, including children who are citizens, and to virtually every federal law.

Yet every Senate Democrat has signed on as a cosponsor of this loony legislation.

Prayer in the Public Square

In September 2014, there were several shootings in the city of Ocala, Florida. Two young children and an infant were shot. 

Ocala Police Chief Greg Graham wanted help from the community to solve these crimes, so he went to the local NAACP. In the course of their discussions, they decided to hold a prayer vigil. 

Now remember the context, friends. This is just days after the Ferguson riots. The whole country was on edge. 

Bringing the community together, law enforcement and civil rights activists, through prayer was a tremendous idea. More than 500 people attended the vigil in the city’s public square.

But a handful of atheists complained and they sued because the Ocala Police Department promoted the event. Now a federal judge has ruled that this act of public prayer was a violation of First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The ruling is totally absurd. This was not a Baptist event. It was not a Catholic event. It was not a Jewish event. And in no way did this one prayer vigil in a north Florida community establish a national religion for the entire country, which is what the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Establishment Clause.

To the contrary, the Founders would be encouraged by acts of public prayer, and that is why they also wrote in the First Amendment that the government shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion.

I am pleased to report that the City of Ocala is appealing the decision. I hope and pray it prevails.

My friends, these are not isolated battles. These are all skirmishes in the larger cultural war that is raging in America today. 

Can we define our own borders?

Can we still acknowledge and ask blessings from the God our Founders said our liberty comes from?

Does an unborn child have any protections under our Constitution? 

What does patriotism require of us?

Do we even know what a man and a woman is?

These are not insignificant questions. They define us as a nation. And in every case, the Left is pushing demands that would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago.

Thankfully, we have a president who knows how to take a punch and, more importantly, throw a punch in this fight.