Isn’t it interesting how whenever a state wants to uphold federal immigration laws, federal judges say they are preempted by the federal government from enforcing the law? Yet, whenever neo-confederate sanctuaries nullify immigration law, it is not only upheld, but the courts say the federal government is powerless to enforce the law of national sovereignty.

Amidst a slew of liberal judges imposing nationwide preliminary injunctions on DOJ’s policy of curtailing federal law enforcement grants to sanctuary cities, a San Francisco judge has now implemented a permanent block. Judge William H. Orrick issued a preliminary injunction back in April based on Trump’s political statements with no valid standing from the jurisdictions in question.

In a rich irony, Judge Orrick, an Obama donor, cited separation-of-powers doctrine as well as the Fifth and 10th Amendments in siding with sanctuary cities.

Yes, evidently according to liberal judges, states are reduced to rubble and can’t decide election law and district maps or uphold federal immigration law … but, suddenly, when they want to nullify something manifestly within the powers of the feds, they cite the 10th Amendment! And the irony of separation of powers is lost on him, because nobody is willing to apply that doctrine to the runaway judiciary.

Advocates of judicial supremacy always erroneously cite the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution as proof that states must abide by lawless decisions, but they are missing the proper interpretation of this clause: abiding by federal statute on national issues, such as immigration.

Dale Wilcox of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which filed an amicus brief siding with the government in this case, observed the dangerous precedent set by this ruling.

“If the Supremacy Clause is irrelevant, the result will be a country where agenda-driven politicians are free to choose which federal laws they will obey and which they will defy. This sets a horrible precedent that should be reversed on appeal,” said Wilcox, in a comment to CR.

Imagine if a governor would declare that because he disagrees with some of our foreign wars, he will not deploy his state’s National Guard units to the theater of war. Would courts then say the feds are impotent and incapable of forcing them to comply?

In his April ruling, Judge Orrick contended that only Congress has the spending power and that “federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves.”

Judge Orrick is willingly overlooking the laws on the books.

Last month, when a Chicago judge issued a similar order, I noted that the federalism and separation-of-powers arguments are completely bogus:

Cities like Chicago are taking active steps to undermine, thwart, and downright prohibit police from cooperating with ICE, as required by law (8 U.S.C. 1373). There is no practical way for the federal government to exercise this solemn responsibility if states are active accomplices to the assault on the national sovereignty.

Moreover, 8 U.S.C. 1373 was enacted as part of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act to ensure that illegal aliens don’t benefit from public assistance. By definition, any grant program would benefit illegal aliens were it to be funneled equally to jurisdictions saturated with illegal aliens. Thus, the federal conditions on the executive order are not extraneous to the policy goals of the underlying grant as they would be if, say, the federal government cut off transportation funding to a state for implementing an undesirable social policy related to gender-neutral bathrooms. In this case, the law is designed to target the recipients of benefits, not a social behavior.

Also, as we explained in a previous sanctuary case, the federal government is only limited from using the spending power to coerce states into abiding by a power not within the province of the federal government, such as the drinking age. Immigration, on the other hand, much like deploying the military, is one of the most foundational federal powers.

It is truly disgusting how illegal aliens can get standing to sue for money that statute prohibits them from receiving, yet taxpayers can’t get standing to sue sanctuaries.

In a twist of cruel irony, in July, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the entire state a sanctuary state by barring law enforcement from cooperating with ICE detainers. The man who originally got standing and won that case, Sreynuon Lunn, was subsequently arrested for allegedly slapping a 65-year-old wheelchair-bound woman in the face and stealing $2,000 from her after she exited a bank.

A government of one man

Being a federal judge is an amazing job, especially if you don’t believe in law and the Constitution.

According to our prevailing, albeit erroneous, conception of the judiciary, a liberal judge can grant standing to a plaintiff on any political matter; unilaterally serve as a legislature or executive veto on broad-based policy; apply the ruling nationwide; overturn 200 years of precedent, the Constitution, and statute; and have the new decision be regarded as sacred precedent, and then never stand for reelection.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Yet, the judges have even more power than all three branches combined; they have the power of an emperor. Think about it — even a law that passes the legislature and is signed into law and is upheld for 200 years is not permanent. Yet, the minute a liberal judge overturns our laws, history, and traditions, that is considered permanent precedent. They have the ability to engage in an ad hoc constitutional convention on a daily basis.

This is why I laugh at those who suggest an Article V convention will result in a liberal takeover or “runaway convention.” Why would they undergo the arduous process of winning a targeted amendment in 38 states when they can get a single Obama donor within one of the many permanent circuits they hold to change our most foundational laws and constitutional clauses?

Our entire political debate over the issues is meaningless when unelected judges could win 100 years’ worth of political battles overnight without firing a shot and without incurring any backlash from the electorate.

What is so disgraceful is that there is no sense of urgency in Congress to fix the courts and not a single bill has been advanced to remove immigration from the jurisdiction of lower courts. Instead, the focus is all amnesty all the time.

The stolen sovereignty has gotten so bad that now the federal government cannot even protect us from the worst criminal aliens. At some point, this is the fault of the other two branches, not the judiciary.

Judges have “neither force nor will” to back up their usurpations. It’s time for Trump to demand from Congress the force and will to cut off all funds to sanctuaries in the upcoming budget bill and put the lawless judges in their place. (For more from the author of “Rule by One Man: Judge Declares Sanctuary Cities Law of the Land” please click HERE)

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