'California is always saying 'We want more people.' We will give them an unlimited supply.' Trump says he WILL dump illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities
- The Washington Post reported Thursday that the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months
- White House aides pushed the idea to Homeland Security officials
- It was rejected by the officials as not practical and a bad PR move
- Senior adviser Stephen Miller discussed it with ICE
- Miller has been identified as promoting a purge of top Homeland officials
- The outlet quoted a White House official as saying the proposal was 'just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion'
- Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation
President Donald Trump doubled down Friday on his statement that he will send illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities, saying he will provide them in 'unlimited supply.'
Speaking at the White House at an event meant to focus on telecom upgrades, the president tore into Democrats on illegal immigration and once again confirmed a report that the White House was pushing the issue with federal immigration authorities.
In bravado-filled statements, the president also made clear he intends to target the immigrants in U.S. custody in the home-states and districts of his political rivals – despite statements by his staff that it was not in the offing.
'California is always saying 'We want more people.' We will give them a lot. We will give them an unlimited supply,' Trump intoned.
'We will give them an unlimited supply,' Trump said, describing a plan to bus illegal immigrants to 'sanctuary' cities in California and other areas where representatives have attacked his immigration policies
'And let’s see if they’re so happy,' Trump said. 'They say “we have open arms,” they’re always saying they have open arms, let’s see if they have open arms. The alternative is to change the laws, and we can do that very, very quickly, very easily. OK?”
The president confirmed the policy, which he said he was 'strongly' considering, after the Washington Post reported on the plan to send immigrants in custody to the district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump, in his comments, did not try to disguise politics as a motive for the policy, which he described as a way to strike back at political rivals who have blasted his calls for a border wall and his recent announced cut-off of aid to three Central American countries.
'California, the governor wants to have a lot of people coming, in refugees coming in. A lot of sanctuary cities. Well, we'll give 'em to the sanctuary cities maybe to take care of if, that's the way you want it.
Trump described some of the immigrants, who include asylum seekers, as 'very, very bad people.' Then he said of immigration officers: 'They come and they get 'em and they take 'em back and we get 'em the hell out of here.
The president then went on a tear about asylum laws, complaining that existing law places limitations on the amount of time people who are apprehended without documents can be held in custody while their claims are pending.
'What do you call them? The illegals. I call them the illegals. They came across the border illegally,' he said
'The asylum laws are absolutely insane. They come up in many cases, they're rough gang members, in many cases they're people with tremendous crime records and they're given a statement to read by lawyers that stand there waiting for them. 'Read this statement,' and it says, 'I have great fear for my life, I have great fear for being in my country,' Trump said, using a tone suggesting the appeals are not sincere.
'Even though in some cases some of these people are holding their country's flags and waving their country's flags and then they talk about the fear they have of being in the country that they flag they were waving feely,' he said.
The president also once again blasted immigrant smugglers known as coyotes.
'Just got back from Texas and some of the ranchers tell me – you look at Brooks County, you look at some of the other places – some of the ranchers tell me you have bodies lying all over the land where you have coyotes give them a can of soda and they give ‘em a sandwich and they say Houston’s 300 miles in that direction and the people don’t know what that means,' Trump said.
Trump also described how he likes to refer to the immigrants. 'We’ll bring the illegal – what do you call them? The illegals. I call them the illegals. They came across the border illegally,' he said.
Earlier this week, he told a similar account saying they gave the immigrants a gallon of water.
'That means they can’t make it, that means they have no chance, and they die. It’s something I never heard, I never heard it to this extent,' Trump said. 'Many people die, and they’ll say ‘just head in that direction.’ And we’re doing a lot about it. If we had the wall we wouldn’t have that. If we had the wall people wouldn’t be coming up.”
The president said earlier he is giving 'strong considerations' to the issue, following a report that top officials were pushing the idea – including putting the immigrants into the home district Pelosi, who represents San Francisco.
'Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only,' Trump wrote, confirming a story in the Washington Post, an outlet he often attacks as part of the 'fake news.'
White House officials have tried to pressure US immigration authorities to release migrants detained at the border into so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco to retaliate against President Donald Trump's political adversaries, the Washington Post reported on Thursday
'The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!' Trump wrote.
By adding the word 'only,' the president provided a new detail to the plan. Although the paper had reported top aides pushed the idea with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it did not say sanctuary cities would be the only location where his administration would ship the illegal immigrants.
He also took a different tack than the White House, which shortly before his tweet downplayed the idea. 'The idea was briefly and informally raised and quickly rejected, according to a White House statement, the Washington Post reported.
A White House statement in the original story said: 'This was a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion.'
White House officials first raised the issue of releasing the illegal immigrants in November as a 'caravan' of Central American migrants approached the southern border, according to the report.
Immigration agency officials identified White House senior advisor Stephen Miller as a key figure behind the effort, which occurred as President Donald Trump railed against in influx of illegal immigration and blasted 'catch and release' policies that put immigrants and asylum-seekers on the streets.
'Officials at [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] understood that he was pressing the plan,' the Post reported, in reference to Miller. The powerful aide, who is identified as pushing a purge of top homeland officials, declined to comment, and was not identified in electronic documents that served as the partial basis for the story.
Said a congressional investigator who spoke to a whistleblower about the plan: 'It was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out,' said one congressional investigator who has spoken to one of the whistleblowers. 'What happened here is that Stephen Miller called people at ICE, said if they're going to cut funding, you've got to make sure you're releasing people in Pelosi's district and other congressional districts.'
President Trump confirmed the report even though his White House said the idea had been rejected
Trump's tweets also appeared to confirm that the tactic was meant as a way to needle the 'Radical Left'
The plans that were discussed involved putting the immigrants in areas associated with Trump's political rivals.
While speaking at the conclusion of the Democrats annual retreat Friday in Leesburg, Va., Pelosi scoffed the idea as unfit for the presidency in a nation comprised of immigrants.
'I don't know anything about it,' Pelosi said regarding the idea. 'But again, it's just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful to the challenges that we face as a country – as a people – to address who we are: a nation of immigrants.'
The Post, which reviewed emails on the issue and spoke to unnamed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, said the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months.
News of the plan comes days after the forced resignation of former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
Agency officials identified White House adviser Stephen Miller as being behind the plan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted the proposed move as 'unworthy' of the presidency
Migrants walk along a highway as a new caravan of several hundred people sets off in hopes of reaching the distant United States, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, shortly after dawn Wednesday, April 10, 2019
News of the apparent push follows the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Sources claimed following her departure that the president made demands of the department that were not in keeping with the law. 'At the end of the day, the President refuses to understand that the Department of Homeland Security is constrained by the laws,' a source told CNN following her forced resignation.
Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.
The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report.
But the Post quoted a White House official as saying the proposal was no longer under consideration, calling it 'just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion.'
Trump administration officials proposed the measure in November as a caravan traveled through Mexico with mostly migrants from Central American countries toward the southern US border.
The proposal emerged again in February during a standoff with Democrats over funding the president sought to build a wall on the border, one of the signature issues of his 2016 election campaign and presidency.
California
Has Become America's Cannibal State
https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2019/04/11/california-has-become-americas-cannibal-state-n2544573
California
Has Become America's Cannibal State
https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2019/04/11/california-has-become-americas-cannibal-state-n2544573
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For over
six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent,
the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million
people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.
The state
legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary
fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California
voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved
the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.
California
recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas
taxes in the United States.
California
has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but
its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America's highest. As of April 1,
California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents
buy online from out-of-state sellers.
In late
2017, the federal government capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000.
For high earners in California, the change effectively almost doubled their
state and local taxes.
Such high
taxes, often targeting a small percentage of the population, may have brought
California a budget surplus of more than $20 million. Yet California is never
satiated with high new tax rates that bring in additional revenue. It's always
hungry for more.
Scott
Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco, has introduced a bill
that would create a new California estate tax. Wiener outlined a death tax of
40 percent on estates worth more than $3.5 million for single Californians or
more than $7 million for married couples.
Given the
soaring valuations of California properties, a new estate tax could force
children to sell homes or family farms they inherited just to pay the tax
bills.
Soon,
even more of the Californian taxpayers who chip in to pay half of the state
income taxes will flee in droves for low-tax or no-tax states.
What really
irks California taxpayers are the shoddy public services that they receive in
exchange for such burdensome taxes. California can be found near the bottom of
state rankings for schools and infrastructure.
San
Francisco ranks first among America's largest cities in property crimes per
capita. The massive concrete ruins of the state's quarter-built and now either
canceled or postponed multibillion-dollar high-speed rail system are already
collecting graffiti.
Roughly a
quarter of the nation's homeless live in California. So do about one-third of
all Americans on public assistance. Approximately one-fifth of the state's
population lives below the poverty line. About one-third of Californians are
enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's health care program for low-income residents.
California's
social programs are magnets that draw in the indigent from all over the world,
who arrive in search of generous health, education, legal, nutritional and
housing subsidies. Some 27 percent of the state's residents were not born in
the United States.
Last
month alone, nearly 100,000 foreign nationals were stopped at the southern
border, according to officials. Huge numbers of migrants are able to make it
across without being caught, and many end up in California.
A lot of
upper-middle-class taxpayers feel that not only does California fail to
appreciate their contributions, but that the state often blames them for not
paying even more -- as if paying about half of their incomes to local, state
and federal governments somehow reveals their greed.
The
hyper-wealthy liberal denizens of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the coastal
enclaves often seem exempt from the consequences of the high taxes they so
often advocate for others. The super-rich either have the clout to hire experts
to help them avoid such taxes, or they simply have so much money that they are
not much affected by even California's high taxes.
What is
the ideology behind such destructive state policies?
Venezuela,
which is driving out its middle class, is apparently California's model.
Venezuelan leaders believed in providing vast subsidies for the poor. The
country's super-rich are often crony capitalists who can avoid high taxes.
Similarly,
California is waging an outright war on the upper-middle class, which lacks the
numbers of the poor and the clout of the rich.
Those who
administer California's plagued department of motor vehicles and high-speed
rail authority may often be inept and dysfunctional, but the state's tax
collectors are the most obsessive bureaucrats in the nation.
What is
Sacramento's message to those who combine to pay half the state's income taxes
and have not yet left California?
"Be
gone or we will eat you!"
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