LOS ANGELES — The Division of Homeland Safety’s “sanctuary jurisdiction listing” has extra holes than the plot for the most recent “Mission Not possible” movie.
All it is advisable find out about its accuracy is how my native Orange County fared.
The one O.C. metropolis on the listing is Huntington Seaside — you already know, the ‘burb with an all-Republican council that’s suing California for being a sanctuary state, declared itself a “non-sanctuary” community in January and plans to position a plaque exterior the town’s principal library with an acrostic “MAGA” message.
Lacking from the listing? Santa Ana, long synonymous with undocumented immigrants, which declared itself a sanctuary city all the way back in 2016 and has a deportation defense fund for residents.
Extra laughable errors: Livingston, the primary metropolis within the Central Valley to declare itself a sanctuary for immigrants in 2017, isn’t on the listing. But Santee in San Diego County, so notorious for its racism that folks nonetheless name it “Klantee,” is.
There’s even Represa. Ever heard of it? Me, neither. Seems it’s not a metropolis however the identify of the put up workplace for 2 locations not precisely often known as sanctuaries: Folsom State Jail and California State Jail, Sacramento.
Inside hours of his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an government order tellingly titled “Defending the American Individuals Towards Invasion” that, amongst different issues, acknowledged that sanctuary jurisdictions ought to now not obtain federal funds.
However the Could 29 listing laying out the jurisdictions which might be supposedly topic to the penalty was so flawed that it was taken off the Homeland Safety web site inside days. It’s nonetheless not again up. The hassle appeared cobbled collectively by somebody who typed “sanctuary” and a metropolis’s identify into Google and swallowed regardless of the AI spat up with out even bothering to cross-check with Wikipedia.
Trump’s opponents are already depicting this fiasco as emblematic of an administration that likes to shoot itself within the foot, then put the bloody foot in its mouth. Nevertheless it’s even worse than that.
The listing reveals how blinded by fury the Trump administration is about unlawful immigration. There is no such thing as a mistake too large or too small for Trump to forgive, so long as it’s within the identify of deportation and border partitions. The president’s obsession with tying all of this nation’s actual and imagined ills to newcomers jogs my memory of Cato the Elder, the Roman Republic politician well-known for allegedly saying “Carthage must be destroyed” on the finish of all his speeches, irrespective of the subject.
That’s why the pushback by politicians in opposition to Homeland Safety’s large, lovely boo-boo has been fast — and hilarious.
Huntington Seaside Mayor Pat Burns appeared on KCAL Information to declare that Surf Metropolis’s inclusion was “pure negligence” whereas holding a small white bust of Trump the way in which a toddler clings to its blankey.
Vista Mayor John Franklin, in the meantime, was on the town council that voted in 2018 to assist the Trump administration’s unsuccessful lawsuit in opposition to California’s sanctuary state legislation. He informed ABC 10News San Diego that he thought Vista made the listing as a result of “one other metropolis within the county that bears the same identify to ours … might have, and I haven’t confirmed it but, adopted a sanctuary coverage.”
Dude, say the town’s identify: Chula Vista, a far cooler, muy Latino city nearer to the U.S.-Mexico border than Vista is. It’s additionally on the listing and isn’t a sanctuary metropolis, both.
On the opposite finish of the political spectrum, Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, informed the Voice of OC that he lately suggested Santa Ana officers to “preserve their head low” and never make an enormous deal about their sanctuary metropolis standing — as if hiding beneath a desk, like a “Scooby Doo” caper, will by some means save the town from the Trump administration’s haphazard hammer.
Immigration, greater than every other a part of Trump’s agenda, exemplifies the Silicon Valley cliché of transferring quick and breaking issues. His administration has deported individuals by mistake and given the middle finger to judges who order them brought back. Trump officers are actually transport immigrants to international locations they have no ties to, and shrugging their shoulders. Immigration brokers try to apprehend individuals in locations lengthy thought-about off-limits, like schools and locations of worship.
And but, this nonetheless isn’t sufficient for Trump.
Deportation charges are rising, however nonetheless to not the degrees seen in some years of the Biden and Obama administrations, and never even near Operation Wetback, the Eisenhower-era program that deported over 1,000,000 Mexican nationals. Trump’s deportation dream staff — Homeland Safety head Kristi Noem, border czar Tom Homan and White Home Deputy Chief of Workers Stephen Miller — has berated ICE officers for not doing extra to adjust to Trump’s needs.
The sanctuary listing embodies all of this. Who cares if the wreckage entails human lives, or the Structure? The sloppiness is the purpose. The cruelty is the purpose.
Homeland Safety didn’t reply my request to clarify the failings in its sanctuary jurisdiction listing and why it was taken down. As a substitute, a spokesperson emailed an announcement saying “the listing is being continuously reviewed and could be modified at any time and can be up to date frequently.” The choice whether or not to incorporate a spot, the assertion stated, “is predicated on the analysis of quite a few elements.”
Besides the reality, it appears.
Let’s chuckle on the absurd errors whereas we will. Actually, how pendejo are you able to be to assume that Huntington Seaside is pleasant to undocumented immigrants however Santa Ana isn’t? Let’s chuckle whereas we will, as a result of issues are going to get a lot worse earlier than they get higher.
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