Just when you thought you’d heard and seen it all, members of the Looney Left have shown that there is no end to the insanity and depravity that they would foist upon America and Americans.

Their creation of “Sanctuary Cities” has done incredible damage to national security and public safety by harboring and shielding illegal aliens, including those who have serious criminal convictions from detection by ICE.  These bastions of anarchy should be referred to as “Magnet Cities” because they attract international terrorists and fugitives and transnational gang members.  In point of fact, Sanctuary Cities Endanger – National Security and Public Safety.

Not content with this insanity, some politicians are now demanding that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) be dismantled altogether, creating a de facto “Sanctuary Country.”

They attempt to justify this lunatic proposal by decrying the separation of illegal alien children from their parents when they are arrested for entering the United States without inspection.

In this Orwellian era, smugglers who assist aliens in entering the United States without inspection are referred to as “Human Traffickers.”  Years ago these criminals were referred to as “Alien Smugglers.”  In point of fact, I was assigned to the Anti-Smuggling Unit of the New York District Office in the late 1970’s.

There is a major difference in the perceptions created by this deceptive word-smithing, creating the false illusion that somehow these illegal aliens are “victims of human trafficking.”

To be clear, aliens who are brought to the United States through coercion or deception, are truly the victims of human trafficking.  However, aliens who pay smugglers to enter the United States illegally are not victims but co-conspirators!

Currently hundreds of thousands of American children are in foster care for a number of reasons that include the fact that their parents have been arrested for committing various crimes and there are no family members who can care for them.

This is the unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of prosecuting any law violators who have children.

The media also ignores that many of the illegal alien children were separated from their families before they came to the U.S. / Mexico border when their parents gave their children over to criminal human traffickers / alien smugglers who then attempted to smuggle these unaccompanied children into the United States.  The potential, in fact, exists that even when very young children are found in the care of their “parents” that these adults really are not the parents of the children but are posing as the parents of these alien children in the hopes of not being taken into custody.

Consequently it would be reckless for the Border Patrol to release these very young children along with the adults who brought them here, without first being certain that the adults are truly the parents of these young children.

We cannot rule out the possibility that infants and extremely young children may have been kidnapped by criminals and smugglers to be used as a “get out of jail card” if caught by the Border Patrol.

Therefore I would strongly recommend that DNA testing be conducted before any of these young children are reunited with those claiming to be their parents.

Immigration law enforcement is central and critical to national security, consequently terminating the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States would do irreparable harm to national security and public safety and would violate the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

The 9/11 Commission staff comprised of attorneys and agents of various federal agencies noted this about the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior: “abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity.”

Termination of immigration law enforcement from the interior would also flood America with a virtually limitless supply of foreign workers, thus displacing huge numbers of American and lawful immigrant workers, driving down wages, and resulting in huge increases in remittances wired home by foreign workers, greatly increasing the U.S. national debt and stifling the U.S. economy.

The stampede would overwhelm America’s infrastructure including mass transit, education, healthcare and other such systems and services.

The common mission for all five branches of the U.S. military is to keep America’s enemies as far from our shores as possible.  However, today not all enemy combatants are members of the military of foreign nations.

International terrorists must also be considered enemy combatants who engage in asymmetrical warfare.  Some of these terrorists are supported by foreign governments such as Iran as I noted in my recent article, Congressional Hearing:  Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S.

Unlike enemy saboteurs during World War II, who sought to enter the United States surreptitiously on U-Boats, today’s terrorists and enemy combatants seek to infiltrate the United States by entering without inspection by running our borders or stowing away on ships or by subverting the lawful entry process conducted at ports of entry by committing visa fraud as nonimmigrant (temporary) visitors, as refugees or as lawful admitted permanent resident immigrants.

Border security and the interior enforcement of our immigration laws are, in a very real sense, extensions of the primary mission of the U..S. military, to protect the United States and its citizens from the Damoclean threats posed by terrorists and other enemy combatants.

The official report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel focused specifically on the ability of the terrorists to travel around the world, enter the United States and ultimately embed themselves in the United States going about their deadly preparations.and carry out an attack.

Here are some key excerpts:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

If the United States stopped deporting aliens who entered the United States without inspection, there would be no reason to continue to spend nearly 14 billion dollars per year on CBP (Customs and Border Protection) to conduct inspections at ports of entry and to operate the Border Patrol to interdict those who attempt to evade that important inspections process.

Furthermore, the interior enforcement mission involves much more than simply arresting and deporting aliens who enter the U.S. illegally or subsequent to lawfully entering the U.S. commit crimes and/or violations of their immigration status.

Immigration fraud investigations are critical to the integrity of the immigration system and to national security.

The report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel  addressed immigration fraud this way:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.”

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

ICE agents are also conduct investigations into crooked employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens- not out of compassion but greed, paying these employees substandard wages under often illegally hazardous conditions.

ICE agents also play a major role in various task forces.

In fact, ICE contributes the second largest contingent of law enforcement personnel to the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) because virtually all international terrorists violate immigration laws to enter the United States and embed themselves in our country.

Another critical task force, and one I am intimately familiar with, is the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) where I was assigned for the final ten years of my INS career.

There is a clear nexus between alien smuggling and drug smuggling and, indeed, today much of the alien smuggling crimes are committed by members of major drug trafficking organizations.

Furthermore, since heroin and cocaine are not produced in the U.S. and much of the meth and marijuana sold by drug trafficking organizations are smuggled into the United States, aliens tend to head up most of these operations in the U.S.

Calls for terminating ICE are tantamount to calling for “shields down” in a particularly dangerous era.

Politician who seeks the termination of ICE should hear from the voters in the voting booth.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.