One of the immigration enforcement problems that’s still around is the situation of illegal aliens taking up residence in churches for the “sanctuary” they offer.

As it happens, the concept is fake —churches cannot set themselves up as mini Mexicos inside the United States, separate from American law. ICE officers could walk in any time and arrest the foreigners, but they don’t do so because they think it would look bad to have a Mexican moocher being dragged out with a priest squawking about the cruelty of la migra.

Many US citizens would cheer to see ICE arrests in the hypocritical churches, which are America-hating pro-Mexican institutions, but we probably won’t ever get to see that welcome sight.

Remember Elvira Arellano? She was the poster Mexican church lurker a decade ago, often holding her anchor-baby kid as a prop, as I imagined at the time to look like a ventriloquist set-up:

Fox News had a chat on the subject on Monday with Pastor Robert Jeffress who assured viewers that ICE could arrest the lawless foreigners at any time:

PASTOR JEFFRESS: I think our viewers are going to be surprised to learn that churches actually have no ability to harbor or offer sanctuary to people breaking the law. Right now, law enforcement officials can go into any church, any mosque, any synagogue and arrest those who are breaking the law, whether it be illegal immigrants, domestic terrorists or tax evaders; the only reason immigration officials aren’t doing that right now is they don’t think the optics wouldn’t look good of doing that, but right now they have the freedom to do that if they want to.

The Washington Times printed an article on Friday that precipitated the discussion: