The GOP’s Condemnation of ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Is Surprisingly Awkward in Iowa
By Robert Samuels. Illegal immigration makes Bill Hartzell seethe. The memories are fresh from the afternoon in October 2013 when he saw his wife’s 93-year-old grandmother bloodied and unconscious, after being beaten and raped in her house by a 19-year-old Mexican who crossed the border and never left.
His outrage is driving Hartzell to vote in Monday’s Iowa presidential caucuses for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who has vowed to battle the “sanctuary cities” that refuse to help the feds deport illegal immigrants. Cruz has said that he would block these localities from receiving federal funds for law enforcement — an idea that makes perfect sense to Hartzell.
Except for when it applies to the place where he lives.
Pottawattamie County’s sheriff adopted a sanctuary policy in 2014. Hartzell knows the sheriff. He trusts the sheriff. And he is uncomfortable with how his county, which includes Council Bluffs, would lose at least a million dollars should a President Cruz carry out his threat . . .
With illegal immigration roiling the GOP electorate, the party’s presidential candidates have spent months blasting sanctuary cities as bastions of liberal naivete and bleeding-heartedness gone awry. No place symbolized this mind-set better, they have said, than San Francisco, where last year, 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was allegedly murdered by an illegal Mexican migrant. (Read more from “The GOP’s Condemnation of ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Is Surprisingly Awkward in Iowa” HERE)
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Iowa Town Embodies Immigrant Divide
By Thomas Fitzgerald. At the 3 p.m. shift change Friday, compact cars rimmed with road salt and dirt rolled up to the JBS Swift meatpacking plant, ranchera and salsa music trickling from a few rolled-down windows.
Hundreds of mostly brown-skinned men walked double-time into the plant, part of the wave of Latino immigrants who, over the last two decades, have transformed this city from a traditional farming community to what could be the most diverse municipality in overwhelmingly white Iowa . . .
In the week leading to Iowa’s presidential caucuses, seven candidates from both parties descended on Marshalltown, about an hour northeast of Des Moines. After services at New Hope Christian Church last Sunday, the pastor and his wife handed out tip sheets listing each event and urged congregants to go.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican, held a town hall in the church auditorium that day. Later in the afternoon, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, briefly the front-runner in the Iowa GOP race, spoke at the Best Western Regency Inn. In quick succession last week came Republicans: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former high-tech CEO Carly Fiorina. (Read more from “Iowa Town Embodies Immigrant Divide” HERE)
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