Following Up: Sign the Deal – then Seize the Border Security Initiative

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border security, border wall, Congress, crime, criminal aliens, Defense Department, Democrats, detention, Following Up, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, national emergency, shutdown, Trump

From what’s known of it, I’m as angry about the border security deal reached last night by Congressional negotiators to avert a new partial federal government shutdown as much as any immigration realist and/or supporter of President Trump. Even so, I would urge the President to sign it. (If he can win a few small improvements over the next day or two, as he’s just suggested he’ll seek, fine – but nothing achievable is worth sinking the agreement.) Then I’d recommend that he move to keep his promise that “we’ll be building the wall anyway” by using statutory authority to use Defense Department and other federal assets and resources to engage in barrier construction and secure the border in various other ways. In addition, the Trump administration should redouble efforts to keep his opponents on the defensive politically by shining the spotlight even more brightly on border security gaps left wide open by deal provisions they’ve insisted on.

I know that in yesterday’s post I argued that the Congressional Democrats, who have increasingly made clear their desire to gut meaningful border security completely, would both own a new shutdown morally (in terms of responsibility for government workers and contractors temporarily denied paychecks) and possibly pay a heavy price politically. The trouble is, that contention assumed that the Democrats’ latest cynical gambit, a new, goalpost-moving demand to shrivel (further) the federal government’s ability to detain apprehended illegal aliens – including surging numbers of border crossers – until their status hearings are held, would prevent the negotiators from reaching any agreement.

Consequently, any number of such aliens, including convicted criminals, would be released into American society, with little reason to believe many of them would risk a deportation decision (which would not be first for many). The result, as I wrote yesterday, would be a big victory for the Democrats’ principal goal of maximizing the number of migrants who can set foot on American soil to begin with, who consequently could avail themselves of the full range of legal due process protections to which everyone within U.S. territory is entitled, who would be released before their status hearings, and who would be scot-free to live and work in the United States until the Open Borders crowd could implement yet another amnesty.

Instead, the negotiators came to a conclusion that they, at least – if not necessarily many in their respective parties – could accept. There’s no denying that its threadbare reported barrier appropriation figure ($1.375 billion) would leave the current border security situation just about as unacceptable as it is today. So would the reported new quota on detention beds, which represent a big part of Washington’s ability to ensure that individuals arrested for immigration-law and related transgressions show up for hearings.

Final judgment should be withheld until the official text of the deal is released – especially on the beds issue. But some of the worst possible outcomes – from an immigration realist perspective – appear to have been avoided. In particular, although previous votes by Democrats so far haven’t been enough to prevent closet Open Borders supporters like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from declaring walls to be “immoral,” the new agreement will make this childish position more difficult than ever to take. In addition, the current number of border detention beds is being cut, but not, it seems, by nearly as much as the Democrats recently sought, and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency apparently will retain flexibility in their location.

Further, as its spokespeople have insisted, there’s a strong argument that President has ample legal authority to build and strengthen more in the way of barriers than the deal approves – even without taking the highly controversial step of declaring a national emergency. For example, as noted by one of my Twitter followers (“TruthHunterMan”), in a variety of circumstances, federal law states that “The Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime of any other department or agency of the Federal Government or of any State, local, tribal, or foreign law enforcement agency.”

Moreover, this statute specifies that one of the purposes for which this assistance may be provided include “the transportation of supplies and equipment, for the purpose of facilitating counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime within or outside the United States” and, more specifically, “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

In addition, as stated by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, “We will take as much money as you can give us and then we will go find money someplace else legally in order to secure that southern barrier.” So let the search intensify.

Finally, the Trump administration has done a fair job of publicizing the dangers to public safety posed by inadequate border security, but much more is possible. For instance, couldn’t the administration vividly illustrate how limits on detention are forcing the release of dangerous aliens by publishing on a regular basis the names of these individuals and the charges against them? And maybe some mass releases could be conducted regularly, too – with officials reading this information to broadcast news audiences as the migrants in question are set free? That would sure be Must-See TV. 

This strategy would have the added virtues of freeing federal workers – especially low-wage workers employed both directly and indirectly through contractors – of the threat of real economic hardship; of avoiding the forced labor situation that results from requiring essential workers to report to their jobs even if their departments aren’t funded; and of ensuring that the quality of vital services like air traffic control and Department of Homeland Security missions including Coast Guard patrols isn’t dangerously degraded.

Even passage of the latest full Trump proposal wouldn’t have strengthened border security much in the near future. So signing the Congressional compromise clearly wouldn’t produce a fatal setback. The main challenge now before the President is to flip as much of the script as he can, and capitalize on all the opportunities before him to secure as much of the border as America can ASAP.

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Im-Politic: Shutdown Lessons – So Far

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border security, border wall, China, Congress, Democrats, E-Verify, election 2020, establishment Republicans, government shutdown, illegal alien crime, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, North Korea, Paul Ryan, Populism, Russia-Gate, shutdown, Swamp, Trade, Trump

Since the fight isn’t over by a long shot, it’s chancy at best to try to figure out many of the biggest implications of President Trump’s decision to reopen the shut down parts of the federal government despite getting no new funding for a Border Wall or any new physical barriers aimed at strengthening border security. Still, here’s what looks reasonably clear at this stage of the struggle:

>First and foremost, the shutdown situation, context, and therefore even the verdict were set in stone more than two years ago by the Russia collusion/election cheating charges, by the opposition (mainly passive) to President Trump’s immigration agenda of the establishment Republicans still so prominent in Congress (and not just in its leadership) during the Trump administration’s first two years, and the resulting politics of impeachment.

That is, as I’ve written previously, from his first day in office, Mr. Trump needed to secure the protection of Congressional Republicans – including their establishment ranks. Therefore, he needed to prioritize their top issues, like Obamacare repeal and a tax cut heavily weighted toward business, rather than his top – populist – issues, like fixing America’s broken trade and immigration policies.

It’s true that in his second year, the President has ramped up the pressure on leading trade predator China and on other mercantile economies (with his steel and aluminum tariffs). But unlike the Border Wall, those measures didn’t require Congressional funding, or any form of approval from Capitol Hill. (The new trade deal with Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement seems to be moderate enough to at least have attracted mild endorsements from the Big Business-run Offshoring Lobby.)

And if establishment Congressional Republican leaders like former House Speaker Paul Ryan and current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell weren’t going to go the mat for the Wall (which of course would also have required helping to persuade some moderate Democrats to come along as well) when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, there was absolutely no way Mr. Trump could have generated Wall funding once the Democrats gained control of the House.

Incidentally, it’s being reported by at least one non-anonymous source with first-hand knowledge that the President himself provided some confirmation for this argument – by blaming Ryan for “having ‘screwed him’ by not securing border wall money when Republicans had the majority….”

>If you’re going to shut down the government, and especially if you’re planning to dig in your heels for the duration, shut down the right agencies. For example, if the issues are illegal immigration and law enforcement, don’t shut down the Department of Homeland Security – which is chiefly responsible for protecting the nation’s security in these areas. If you’re a Republican, don’t shut down the Agriculture Department, whose rural constituency is overwhelmingly Republican and conservative, and which was already unhappy enough with the President about China trade policies that had pretty much shut down America’s immense soybean exports to the People’s Republic. Also if you’re a Republican don’t shutdown the Federal Aviation Administration – because victims are especially likely to be businessmen and women and other relatively affluent voters – who provide lots of actual and gettable Republican votes.

>Consequently, the politics of shutdowns, and of some aspects of political populism, are becoming clearer than ever – especially if they’re long ones. And many of these should have been obvious from the start.

Most obvious, voters of all kinds – populists and non-populists alike – who are receptive to anti-government arguments get a lot less anti-government when the affected services affect them directly.

Less obvious, populist voters themselves say and act happy to see populist politicians act like disrupters when it comes to the mutually supportive networks of corruption and propaganda set up by establishment politicians, lobbyists, consultants, think tank hacks, and mainstream media journalists in the Washington, D.C. Swamp The same goes for establishment policies they believe have brought them nothing but trouble, like mass immigration, offshoring-friendly trade deals, and pipe dream foreign wars and similar ventures.

What they don’t want disrupted is the steady stream of government services that make their lives easier – and even viable in the first place.

>For reasons like the above, it’s unimaginable that Mr. Trump will follow through with his threat to shut down the government again if he can’t persuade Democrats to compromise acceptably on Wall funding. His best hope for some kind of partial win is to portray himself as the reasonable party, and the Democrats as the arrogant, rigid extremists.

>In that vein, expect continued, and even more frequent administration activity spotlighting crimes by illegal aliens – especially in the districts and states of key lawmakers. But success is also likely to require claims (which are entirely credible, in my opinion) that illegal aliens steal jobs from native-born Americans and/or drive down their wages, and that the leading victims include minority Americans.

>One particularly effective tactic would be for the administration to push for mandating that businesses use the E-Verify system to prevent illegal aliens out of the national job market. E-Verify is currently being used on a voluntary basis by many companies (not including most Trump-owned companies), and by all accounts is extremely accurate. (That is, it snares virtually no innocents in its electronic net.) But its use so far has been voluntary, meaning that companies that blow it off get legs up on their competition by virtue of easy access to bargain-basement illegal employees.

>Another potentially effective talking point that the administration has strangely ignored: focusing on the sheer numbers of foreigners who’d be likely to swamp U.S. borders – and the country’s asylum system – without more effective physical barriers. The administration and all of its spokespeople and media supporters should keep asking the question of Democrats: How many tens of millions of these would-be immigrants and asylum-seekers can the United States afford to admit?

>If these Trump efforts fail, declaring a national emergency looks like the President’s best bet to reestablish credibility with his base and perhaps with fence-sitting voters and Members of Congress, and even some legislative opponents.

Such a move could also go far toward putting the most politically damaging aspects of this issue behind him. After all, there’s little that opponents can do about such a national emergency declaration other than try to tie it up in the courts. And Mr. Trump could – credibly, in my opinion – respond by using information about illegal aliens crime to accuse them of endangering their countrymen and women’s security. So even if rulings by friendly judges hold up actual Wall construction, Mr. Trump’s political position could benefit.

>The President also could well be tempted to score political points by pressing harder to win some foreign policy victories. A China trade deal and significant progress in limiting the nuclear weapons threat posed by North Korea are the two most obvious candidates, but presidential over-eagerness could seriously undermine major American interests.

I’m most worried about the administration’s dealings with Beijing, given the talk out of China of ending the current trade conflict for the foreseeable future by buying lots more American goods and services. More Chinese imports from the United States would be welcome – no mistake about that. But not if the price is letting Beijing off the hook for its ambitions literally to steal and subsidize its way to global supremacy in key technologies that not so coincidentally have big defense implications.

>Finally, re shutdowns themselves, the policy of requiring furloughed workers to do their jobs without getting paid strikes me as completely unacceptable. In other circumstances like this, at home or abroad, these practices are called “forced labor” or “wage theft.” And they’re rightly condemned. Nearly as bad, these furlough practices help pro-shutdown politicians curry favor with their supporters while mitigating or at least postponing the harm to the public – including those supporters.

In other words, if you’re for a shutdown, make it a real shutdown. For any agency whose funding is cut off, the workers stay home – and the jobs they do don’t get done. If that means chaos ensues and public safety is put at risk, too bad for shutdown-ers. They’ll own it.

>Speaking of owning it, that’s the situation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now finds herself in not only regarding border security but every issue that comes up in national affairs. In particular, when you show you’ve gained enough power to win political battles, you also show that you’ve gained enough power to frustrate initiatives that may be unpopular among your caucus in Congress, or some of your caucus, but that may be popular with everyone else. So forget about the the idea that Pelosi is now free to conduct a campaign of all-encompassing resistance to the Trump agenda, and to dictate terms of those proposals that she is willing to consider.

>And finally, that’s one of the many reasons it’s way too early to predict how the shutdown fight will impact the next presidential election. The main additional reasons: There’s still a long ways to go before that campaign achieves critical mass, and any number of events could turn the political calculus upside down. And similarly, it’s glaringly obvious that the Trump era news cycle – along with the national attention span – is already the shortest in recent memory – and could well keep getting shorter.

Im-Politic: With Friends Like Jennifer Rubin, Pelosi Doesn’t Need Enemies

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border wall, Im-Politic, Jennifer Rubin, Nancy Pelosi, shutdown, The Washington Post, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome

Is Nancy Pelosi prepared to stonewall on the Border Wall/government shutdown showdown even though she’s anticipating that it would “create a serious safety hazard” for Americans or “take a big chunk out of the economy” – which would involve major job and wage loss? Is she counting on this, at least to some degree, to win a big political victory? I certainly don’t know the answer. But Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin thinks she does. Moreover, those aren’t only precisely the claims she made in a column this past week. It’s a position for which she believes the House Speaker deserves praise.

In the process, Rubin both showed how far into fringe Never Trump-er territory she’s proudly marched.

The point in question came at the end of a piece in which Rubin fulsomely praised Pelosi’s skill in dealing with Mr. Trump – and especially her shutdown-related decision in effect to prevent the President from delivering the annual State of the Union speech in its traditional (but not Constitutionally mandated) place on the House of Representatives floor. According to Rubin:

“We don’t know how this will end, but should the shutdown create a serious safety hazard or take a big chunk out of the economy, there is little doubt who’s going to get the blame. And Pelosi knows it.”

My overall take on the Border Wall/shutdown battle is that Mr. Trump has demonstrated far more willingness to compromise than has the Speaker – and that it’s up to her to start reciprocating in order to re-open the government and minimize the chances that major damage will be done. But you don’t have to agree with me to recognize how bizarre – in fact, outright sick – Rubin’s contentions are.

For Rubin here is not simply saying that Pelosi is playing the same kind of game of chicken as Mr. Trump, or placing more of the blame on the President because she considers his position less defensible. Rubin is also saying that, regardless of the merits, Pelosi is basing her stance at least in part on an expectation that a shutdown-related calamity, either disaster-wise or economy-wise, will take place, and that most of the resulting blame will fall on Mr. Trump and his party and his cause – not hers. And in Rubin’s view, what’s most important to know about this calculation is how likely it would be to harm the President, and how therefore it crowns Pelosi as a political genius.

What the column really shows, of course, is that Rubin is so thoroughly infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome that it’s more important for her to see the President take a major political hit than to maximize the odds that everyday Americans don’t take major economic and worse hits from the shutdown. And unless Rubin is wrong, and she really isn’t counting on this, no one should be more offended by this column than Pelosi.