I&I Editorial

What if House Democrats drew up articles of impeachment charging President Trump not with obstruction of justice but with obstruction of those entering America illegally?

The ructions for months now over the continuous unauthorized entry of multitudes across the southern border, their often-dubious appeals for political asylum, and the shameful exploitation of children by those seeking to get into the country any way they can are being used to the full against Trump.

If Democrats can’t convince the country that he’s Nixon, maybe they can convince the country he’s the witch from “Hansel and Gretel,” catching little children he can fatten up, roast in the oven, and consume.

Although the House Judiciary Committee remains intent on re-pursuing ex-special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, to the extreme of even insisting that Mueller testify after he publicly stated at the end of May that the investigation is complete and his lengthy two-part report constitutes his testimony, it’s widely conceded, even among Trump haters, that there is nothing impeachable there.

So in tandem with its demands for documents and testimony regarding Russia, the panel has also sought numerous immigration documents from the administration. On Tuesday the committee authorized subpoenas for them in anticipation of Mueller’s appearances before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees next week. Administration officials have been yelled at in House hearings on children being separated from the illegal aliens accompanying them at the border. And earlier this month Democratic House members visited border facilities and raised an uproar regarding conditions there, with doubtful tales of Nazi-like concentration camps and guards telling migrants to drink from the toilet.

The inundation at the border is great fuel for the Democrats’ talking points for 2020, but it’s also a Plan B for impeachment.

Promising To Pardon For Protecting The Border

Back in April, committee chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and other panel Democrats latched onto a remark Trump made while visiting the border at Calexico, California, about pardoning then-Customs and Border Protection commissioner and current acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan if he “ever went to jail for denying U.S. entry to migrants.” They also, based on New York Times and CNN stories, suspect the president directed DHS personnel to deny migrants entry, allegedly stating: “tell them we don’t have the capacity … If judges give you trouble, say, ‘Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.’”

Nadler and the other Judiciary panel Democrats charge: “Closing the Southern border to migrants would violate section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act as well as the United States’ obligations under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.”

They add: “Ordering government personnel to violate the law is arguably a violation of the Constitution’s Take Care Clause, while offering a pardon to encourage an officer of the U.S. government to undertake an illegal action appears on its face to be an unconstitutional abuse of power.”

In following this line of investigation, the committee wants “Documents and communications relating to [now-former Homeland Security] Secretary [Kirstjen] Nielsen’s meeting with President Trump on or about March 21, 2019, to discuss reinstating the zero-tolerance policy and closing the U.S.-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas,” including “any contemporaneous accounts of the meeting shared by Secretary Nielsen with DHS personnel.”

In addition, in February the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena documents regarding family separation from DHS, HHS and the Justice Department.

Outside government you have the forces of the left doing their utmost to prevent enforcement of immigration law, make the many millions of illegal aliens living here into permanent residents, and normalize open borders. A case in point: the American Civil Liberties Union this week charged that the Pennsylvania State Police have been “profiling and illegally stopping people based on their Latino appearance in order to uncover supposed immigration violations.” The ACLU accuses state troopers of violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner this week attacked the U.S. government for “border management measures … based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deporting irregular migrants.”

Most voters, even liberals, don’t consider controlling the border a “narrow” policy, and if Democrats actually pursue an impeachment inquiry on Trump for his aggressiveness in this area, it will do more than backfire; it will likely break the barriers wide open for a long-overdue, healthy national debate on immigration, both illegal and legal — a debate the open-borders bloc will lose.

— Written by Thomas McArdle

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