DOJ Warns States About Second Amendment Sanctuaries

Meanwhile immigration sanctuary policies are lauded and emulated.


On June 17, 2021 AOL published an Associated Press report under the title, Justice Dept.: Missouri governor can’t void federal gun laws.  This report began with this excerpt:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is warning Missouri officials that the state cant ignore federal law, after the governor signed a bill last week that bans police from enforcing federal gun rules.

In a letter sent Wednesday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Justice officials said the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause outweighs the measure that Gov. Mike Parson signed into law Saturday. The new rules penalize local police departments if their officers enforce federal gun laws.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said the law threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities, they said in the letter, noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.

The public safety of the people of the United States and citizens of Missouri is paramount,” Boynton wrote in the letter.

The DOJ did not have to wait long for a response.  Just hours later, as reported by ABC News, Missouri responds defiantly to Justice Dept. over gun law, which noted, in part:

Similar bills were introduced in more than a dozen other states this year, including Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Iowa. In Texas, the governor has called for the state to become a so-called Second Amendment sanctuary.

Wow!  A new form of “Sanctuary policies” enacted by state governments and the federal government under Mr. Biden’s “leadership” is upset!

Having uttered the magic word “Sanctuary”, we cannot ignore that over the past several decades a growing number of cities and states, almost invariably led by radical leftists, have implemented so-called “sanctuary policies” that, to varying degrees, hamper cooperation between local and state police and federal immigration law enforcement authorities.

Certainly, our nation’s immigration laws are serious laws that were enacted to protect national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of Americans.

Frequently these sanctuary policies have increased to the point where detainees lodged by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel have been blatantly ignored so that aliens who have serious criminal histories were released from custody rather than be turned over to ICE so that could be deported from the United States.

A few of these cases received attention from the media, but in reality a huge number of such criminal aliens who should have been removed (deported) from the United States were permitted to roam freely in towns and cities across the United States, all too frequently, with tragic results.

Consider the horrific case of 32 year old Kate Steinle who was shot to death by Jose Ines Garcia-Zarate, a citizen of Mexico who was illegally present in the United States and had and extensive criminal history in the United States.  He had been previously deported from the United States five times, so that his mere presence in the United States constituted a felony under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): 8 U.S. Code § 1326.

On December 1, 2017 Business Insider published a report about this case, Kate Steinle’s death at the hands of a Mexican national became a flashpoint in the immigration debate — here’s the story behind her killing.  Here is an excerpt from this report:

At the time of Steinle’s death, Garcia Zarate had been convicted of nonviolent drug crimes and deported five times since the early 1990s.

He faced a sixth deportation in 2015, and was in Justice Department (DOJ) custody that March after serving 46 months in prison for a felony re-entry into the US, but instead of transferring him into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, the department transferred him to the San Francisco County Jail for prosecution of a 1995 marijuana charge.

San Francisco prosecutors, who had long ago deprioritized marijuana charges, dismissed the decades-old charge and released Garcia Zarate on April 15, 2015. Due to San Francisco’s policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities — which some refer to as a “sanctuary” policy — the city did not inform ICE when they released Garcia Zarate.

There is a huge number of similar cases around the United States, where “sanctuary policies” that contradict federal immigration law has resulted in the death and injury of thousands of victims at the hands of aliens who were illegal in the United States, subject to deportation but were shielded, aided and abetted by the jurisdictions who declared themselves to be “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens, in apparent violations of a number of laws, beginning with 8 U.S. Code § 1324 that begins with the following:

(a) Criminal penalties

(1)

(A) Any person who—

(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;

(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;

(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;

(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or

(v)

(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or

(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,

When President Trump acted to end sanctuary policies that harbor and shield illegal aliens, out of his well-founded concerns about public safety and national security, he was rebuffed in the courts and by globalists who complained that his efforts were based on xenophobia” and God knows what else!

Did the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission that we keep so much about by Nancy Pelosi suffer from racism and xenophobia?  Pelosi has repeatedly called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Back on December 21, 2004, the Congressional Research Service issued a wide-ranging report that must be made mandatory reading for every political leader of the United States.  The title of the report was: 9/11 Commission: Legislative Action Concerning U.S. Immigration Law and Policy in the 108th Congress Updated December 21, 2004.

Here is the summary of this report began:

Summary

Reforming the enforcement of immigration law is a core component of the recommendations made by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission). The 19 hijackers responsible for the 9/11 attacks were foreign nationals, many of whom were able to obtain visas to enter the United States through the use of forged documents. Incomplete intelligence and screening enabled many of the hijackers to enter the United States despite flaws in their entry documents or suspicions regarding their past associations. According to the Commission, up to 15 of the hijackers could have been intercepted or deported through more diligent enforcement of immigration laws.

The 9/11 Commissions immigration-related recommendations focused primarily on targeting terrorist travel through an intelligence and security strategy based on reliable identification systems and effective, integrated information-sharing. As Congress has considered these recommendations, however, possible legislative responses have broadened to include significant and possibly far-reaching changes in the substantive law governing immigration and how that law is enforced, both at the border and in the interior of the United States.

The next time Nancy or her disciples invoke the 9/11 Commission, they need to be pointedly asked if they read the 9/11 Commission Report and how they and the Biden administration can blithely ignore the clear and present danger the Biden administration’s immigration policies (actions and lack of action) create for America and Americans.

Our nation’s Constitution and laws are not a menu from which picky eaters can decide what to order or not order.  It is hypercritical and beyond outrageous that the DOJ would attack Sanctuary policies regarding the Second Amendment while not only sanctioning immigration sanctuary policies, but actually emulating those extremely dangerous policies in clear violation of standing federal law and in direct opposition to the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

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