If the Biden Administration’s sabotage of America’s borders has resulted in anything positive, it has served to expose the fraud of sanctuary policies and the politicians who support them. For years sanctuary “leaders” have been showered with unearned praise for their empty rhetoric. Now, the border crisis is applying a stress test to them and their jurisdictions, and both are failing miserably.
After nearly endless stories of sanctuary foolishness the last several years, we may now be reaching peak absurdity. State officials in California, America’s petri dish of radical leftist policies, are caterwauling because 36 migrants were flown to Sacramento on two planes by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (DOEM). Governor Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta are accusing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of sending the migrants, although there is no evidence DeSantis authorized the flights.
Newsom, the archetype of the hyper-ambitious, attention-obsessed modern politician, took the matter to Twitter, where he called DeSantis a “small, pathetic man” and suggested that the Florida governor is guilty of kidnapping by allegedly tricking migrants to board the planes to California.
To eviscerate Newsom’s accusation is to be like a mosquito at a nudist colony. Where to start? Within 24 hours of Newsom’s charge, the Florida DOEM released a video showing migrants signing consent forms agreeing to be flown to California. The video also showed the migrants celebrating both on the planes and in what appears to be a stretch limousine, and saying the Florida officials treated them “super well.” In what world does that resemble a kidnapping?
Throughout his office’s press releases and in his stump speeches pandering to illegal aliens, Newsom is fond of saying that “our communities are all stronger and more innovative because of the nearly 11 million immigrants that call California home.” Given that, why is he so enraged that a paltry 36 migrants arrived in his state capital? Doesn’t it just mean more strength and innovation for California at Florida’s expense?
It also strains credulity to believe anyone in the United States illegally would not prefer to be in California. Throughout his term as governor, Newsom has pushed through a cornucopia of benefits for illegal aliens including guaranteed free healthcare, state identification cards, and $125 million in COVID-19 relief, to name a few.
The anti-borders activists and their allies in the corporate media have been vilifying DeSantis for allegedly turning Florida into the most inhospitable place in America for illegal aliens. If that is true, then the DOEM should be praised for rescuing those aliens from the hellish gulag that is Florida and delivering them to the tent city paradise of California.
Since red state governors began sending illegal aliens to sanctuary cities last summer, the leaders of those cities have been flummoxed about how to deal with the people who, in their sanctuary bombast, they claimed to want.
After filling many of New York City’s luxury hotels with migrants, an exasperated Mayor Eric Adams is putting aliens in elementary school gyms and is now floating the idea of paying city residents to shelter them in their homes. To Adams, Newsom, and other like-minded politicians, such absurd remedies make more sense than facing the inescapable truth: sanctuary policies are unsustainable and destructive to their communities.
Given the state of cold war that now exists between sanctuary and non-sanctuary states, the country could use a sage leader in the White House to bring the two sides together and create a better way forward. Unfortunately, America is bereft of leadership at the federal level. We have a hyper-partisan in the Oval Office who clings to the demonstrably implausible sanctuary philosophy. There is no Biden-Newsom-DeSantis beer summit forthcoming.
At a time when the nation needs wisdom, we get something far less from the Biden Administration. When asked about the Florida-California skirmish, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre demonstrated her trademark tone-deafness.
[B]ussing or flying migrants around the country without any coordination with the federal government—we’ve talked about this, state or local officials as well—is dangerous and unacceptable. . . . We will continue to be very, very clear about that. It is dangerous and unacceptable, because you’re putting people’s lives at risk.
The lack of self-awareness or outright deception in that statement is jarring. It is the Biden Administration that has chartered “ghost flights” of planes packed with illegal aliens to cities around the country under cover of darkness without coordinating with local authorities. The White House sent 70 flights to Jacksonville, Florida alone in 2021. If DeSantis really did authorize sending a few aliens to Sacramento on planes, he got the idea from Joe Biden.
At a time of relative border security, such as during the previous administration, sanctuary politicians could wax poetic about the virtues of being a welcoming community and not have to do much about it. Since Biden and his team of radicals demolished our nation’s borders, the unprecedented influx of migrants is pushing these once-sparkling metropolises to insolvency. For these sanctuary leaders, the catalyst for their problems resides not at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, but at the White House.