When President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE threatened to release throngs of illegal immigrant detainees into America’s sanctuary cities last week, the media and Democrats went bonkers. While the scheme may not pass legal muster, it was “pure genius” as a political ploy.

The mere mention of this possibility caused award-winning artist and progressive activist Cher to take to Twitter and claim that if her hometown of Los Angeles, can’t take care of its roughly 50,000-person homeless population, “How Can it Take Care Of More?”

Newsflash, Cher is absolutely right. Unchecked illegal immigration hurts all Americans, especially working- and lower-class Americans, regardless of ethnicity.

Yet as Congressional Democrats search for Russian agents under every rock and in every crevice on Capitol Hill, they are purposely ignoring the very real crisis and national emergency unfolding in front of their eyes.

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The sheer number of illegal immigrants bum-rushing the country’s southwest border speaks for itself. In March of 2019, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended or deemed inadmissible more than 103,000 aliens, the most in a single month since 2007. For FY 2019, the U.S. Border Patrol has already apprehended more than 361,000 aliens or more than 2,000 a day at the nation’s southern border. With six months left in FY 2019, that number could conceivably top 1,000,000. As a point of reference, in FY 2018 the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended just under 400,000 individuals in total at the southern border.

While the volume of illegal immigrant crossings is staggering, that is only a small part of the problem. The primary issue is the “make up of the flow.” An overwhelming majority of the illegal immigrants are coming from Central America, chiefly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Many are traveling as family units (real or alleged) or as unaccompanied alien children, and an ever increasing percentage are claiming asylum, making it nearly impossible to return them in a timely manner, if at all.

The reason is simple: America’s immigration laws are outdated and ill-equipped to handle the present situation. As crafted currently, the laws are designed to repel single men from Mexico not those traveling as family units or unaccompanied children from Central America or those looking to game the asylum system. Hence, many of these migrants cannot be detained by authorities for any significant period of time and are thus released into the interior of the U.S. in a vast majority of the cases, never to be heard from again. Yes, our current immigration laws incentivize foreign nationals to come here illegally, because chances are they will get to stay indefinitely.

So when President Trump says “[w]e have the worst [immigration] laws of any country in the world. … You have to fix the asylum system, it’s ridiculous” – he is beyond right. Even TheWeek.com’s senior correspondent Damon Linker agrees.

Now Democrats will tell you the solution to the current border crisis is “comprehensive immigration reform,” but that is not only a dishonest talking point designed to accomplish nothing, it is a logical farce.

Yes, it would be nice for Congress to properly tackle birth-right citizenship, chain migration, the diversity visa lottery, an entry/exit system and the plight of the “dreamers,” but, at present, Congress can barely name a post office without pandemonium breaking out.

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The legislative answer, for now, lies in what Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamSenate GOP aims to confirm Trump court pick by Oct. 29: report The Hill's Campaign Report: GOP set to ask SCOTUS to limit mail-in voting Senate GOP sees early Supreme Court vote as political booster shot MORE (R-S.C.) says he will soon be pushing in Congress. Graham is proposing tougher asylum standards as well as fixing the legal loopholes created by the 1997 Flores settlement agreement and its 2015 update, which forbids federal authorities from holding minor children in custody for more than 20 days, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which doesn’t permit minor children to be returned to non-contiguous countries of origin. It is estimated that just by fixing Flores and the TVPRA, 63 percent of illegal border crossings would be addressed. Remember, those claiming asylum today “likely won’t have a formal hearing until 2021.” So this goes far beyond just adding more immigration judges or additional shelters.

To a great extent, Democrats’ obstinance to Trump’s border wall was about thwarting a political enemy. They believed if he couldn’t build the wall, his base would turn on him, making 2020 a much easier proposition for the blue team. But that doesn’t fully explain the Democrats’ outright refusal to even acknowledge the primary cause of this country’s current border security woes. Their motives are far more sinister than just despising Trump.

Thanks to the 14th Amendment, which dictates the mechanics of how the president is elected, as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Evenwell v. Abbott, Democrats are using illegal immigration to alter the balance of power in the Electoral College from rural, Republican-leaning states to those that are predominately blue and in some cases purple. A quick glance at the 20 metro areas with the largest number of illegal aliens confirms this.

No, illegal immigrants aren’t allowed to directly vote for the commander-in-chief yet, but in vast numbers they can dramatically alter the Electoral College to favor Democrats for at least a decade because a state’s electoral votes are based on the number of people residing within that state, not the number of citizens present when the Decennial Census is taken.

If a nefarious power grab seems far-fetched, ask yourself this — why are Democrats so intent on blocking the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census?

It is clear the presence of illegal immigrants can bolster a state’s electoral power, even one that is already arctic blue. Something tells me the Democrats’ keen interest in the plight of the much ballyhooed dreamers has a similar ulterior motive as well.