Immigration updates on many fronts

First, some sabotage that flew under the radar of the Trump movement at the time: in April, DHS suspended Trump's executive order to come up with a regular report on how bad the sanctuary cities are behaving.

That article is from the LA Times, but all the mainstream media reported on it. The Trump movement did not notice it because it came just days after the Syria strike which signaled a return to regime change, and created confusion about who was really running the Trump administration's foreign policy (turns out: Deep State). We were preoccupied with more pressing matters.

That executive order came from the pre-coup phase of the administration (Jan 25), and was intended to "name and shame" sanctuary cities by providing details about how the local police departments that refused to cooperate with ICE had led to this, that, and the other horrible crime, or had let some despicable criminal off the hook.

It was Trump's attempt to use the bully pulpit to whip up popular anger against sanctuary cities, to which the politicians would have to acquiesce at least a little bit, or else face the angry mob.

Pentagon junta member General Kelly was in charge of DHS at the time, and killed that executive order less than two weeks after its implementation in late March. The excuse is that some of the data was inaccurate -- well then, I guess we can't just write reports with accurate data, we have to terminate the program altogether. (It is still "suspended," more than five months after first getting the axe, so it's as good as dead.)

The lesson: the Pentagon is a globalist organization that sees its job as managing a multinational empire, not defending the core nation, when those two goals necessarily conflict. They care more about not-shaming radical Islam than they do about shaming the crimes that sanctuary cities have allowed to happen against Americans by foreigners.

Previous updates have pointed out that there has been no data released to support the claims by ICE that, while deportations have been lower than under Obama, they have shifted to interior deportations rather than meaningless "deportations" that turn people back at the border.

You'd think that an administration -- and a President -- intent on proving that it's fulfilling the campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration, would be releasing hard numbers. Something Trump could brag about, like he does with stats on illegal border crossings.

But ICE has been releasing even less data than it was under Obama, including what eventually happens to people who are the subject of a detainer. Do they actually get deported, or not? Neither the open border nor the build-the-wall side will know.

The excuse is that in the lame duck period, Obama changed the rules about what will be released through FOIA requests -- but it's not like Trump hasn't been President for eight months. Plenty of time to roll back a single regulation from the very end of Obama's term.

Clearly the globalists running DHS do not want the information getting out there, because it will show that the ramp-up in detainers being issued has not resulted in more illegals getting deported. And that there has not been a massive shift toward deportations from the interior vs. at the border. They would brag about that data, if it existed, not hide it and refuse to release it.

Illegal border crossings have doubled since April, so now they're only down 25% from last year, instead of 70-some percent in the first months of the administration. The initial "Trump spook" effect has worn off, and pretty soon those levels will be back to what they were under Obama.

Would-be illegal immigrants have figured out that the government writ large is still not enforcing immigration laws, despite the hardliner President ordering them to. Foreigners see a weak system here and take advantage of it.

At the rally supporting Establishment candidate Luther Strange (the first Trump rally I did not watch), the President revealed that the non-wall options are the only ones in the running for the "build the wall" contest among contractors.

I warned loudly about these non-wall bids months ago -- if the government is so intent on building a wall, why are there two separate tracks of bids, with one group being walls and the other group not being walls?

A lot of Trump supporters who didn't read past the headline, or follow up on exciting stories, only heard about the recent announcement of the four prototypes chosen from the wall track of bids. They didn't read the stories from the week or so after, announcing that four prototypes were also chosen from the non-wall track.

At this late date, how can these non-wall bids even still be in the running?

And yet, Trump tried to soften the blow during the rally by saying that the wall needs to be see-through. How about we "just ask Israel" if border walls need to be see-through? Or have a look at the Great Wall of China? Cameras and watchtowers work just fine.

This was not an off-the-cuff remark, as he said the same thing during Air Force One remarks on Sep 12, with the same risible rationalization about "what if Mexican cartels launch heavy bags of drugs over the wall and the patrol agents don't see it coming and they get hit on the head?"

We can take these remarks to mean that Trump has been informed by the Establishment that there will be no Wall on the southern border, but only some kind of fence, easy enough to slip bodies and contraband through, easy enough to cut a big hole through, etc. Just something empty, meaningless, and symbolic so that he can say he "built a wall".

Does the Establishment really think that the legions of rabid Trump supporters are going to forget Trump's repeated visual imagery from the campaign -- "precast concrete plank" that would tower 30, 40, 50 feet high, so high that once you get up there, you're not coming down easily?

I guess we'll see. Obviously the partisan Republicans will go with just about anything that any Republican President does. But the actual Trump supporters who were there from the very beginning in summer 2015? The iffy and alienated white working class from the Rust Belt? I don't see them cheering for Jeb Bush policies just because they're being sold by the persona of Donald Trump.

It's time to start framing the non-wall as a sabotage of the President and his voters by the Establishment, Deep State, etc., to get them angry enough to demand and even protest for a real wall. Rationalizing some ridiculous fence as the Platonic ideal of a border wall will only result in the cheerleader squad getting dunked on endlessly by the worst liberal shills.

We shouldn't make their jobs easy, and we shouldn't betray the American voters just to save face.

P.S. -- to lighten the mood, have a dark laugh at the roll call votes for the 1986 amnesty. House votes and Senate votes.

Republican President signed it.

Republican-controlled Senate passed it, with R's more in favor than D's. Although majorities of both parties were in favor, 20% of R's voted against, but 40% of D's voted against. Democrat Senators voting against amnesty: Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Bill Bradley.

Dem-controlled House passed it, with D's now more in favor than R's (partisanship). Still, some notable exceptions: Harry Reid voted against amnesty, and so did John Kasich in perhaps his only good vote ever.

If the Dems can re-orient back toward the working class -- a very big if -- I trust them to build a real wall before Republicans would. The GOP is simply too controlled by the Chamber of Commerce and the large farm owners who insist on feudalism as their business model. If Americans won't become serfs, then the immigration system must have open borders and/or unchecked guest worker levels.

Foreign labor flooding in means the death of unions, and with them the evaporation of millions of reliable Democrat voters -- who will not be replaced by reliable immigrant voters, since immigrants don't vote, Hispanics don't vote, and Hispanic immigrants really don't vote.

First the Republicans failed to learn that lesson -- they alienated far more Americans than they gained by pushing amnesty for illegal Hispanics. Now it may be the Democrats' turn -- they will destroy more of their own rock-solid voters than they will bring in through illegal Hispanics (who don't vote).