You might not have heard the news overnight, but our national government has been shut down. Yes, that long-dreaded government shutdown is upon us. No, there was no appropriations lapse of 18 percent of the bureaucracies, nor was there a three-inch snowstorm in the nation’s capital. A single district judge thinks he can violate all rules of standing, 130 years of Supreme Court precedent on sovereignty up to and including Trump v. Hawaii, and shut down any effort to secure our border, including the administration’s half-baked plan on bogus asylum.

Despite spending $892 billion on the military and defense, we refuse to assert our rights over our own border because the ACLU and judges evidently control our borders. We continue to allow lawfare to incentivize and actually allow the entirety of Central America to cross our border, along with drugs, gangs, violence, poverty, and possibly diseases.

In every media interview I’ve given, when asked about the future of the caravan, I emphatically said that there was no way Trump would allow any of them to submit “asylum” claims, because if he couldn’t stop such a brazen invasion, it would be the end of his presidency. Nonetheless, I expressed concern that we’d still ignore the dangerous invasion of roughly 1,000-2,000 coming over every day independently smuggled in by coyotes.

Now it appears I was too charitable. We are not even categorically blocking the caravan, and that was before last night’s illegal, lawless injunction from an Obama judge in San Francisco. It appears that the people in the caravan are being allowed to submit claims, 100 a day. I guess slow-motion catch-and-release is better than a mass rush, but why should we be “managing” an invasion rather than repelling it, as required by the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause, Article IV, Section 4? Slow-motion admission is not what Trump promised before the election:

If we can’t stop a belligerent group of economic migrants carrying flags of their “persecutors” and will instead indulge them as questionable asylees, we no longer have a sovereign nation. Mexicans in Tijuana are now vigorously protesting the caravan’s illegal occupation of their own country. The migrants are reportedly smoking weed and throwing garbage in their neighborhoods, after rejecting Mexico’s own offer of asylum, which in itself is a violation of international asylum law.

Here is a video of a Honduran man in the caravan threatening to kill Mexicans and burn Tijuana after residents of Playas de Tijuana demanded that the caravan leave.

Folks, a functioning government would send our military to the San Diego border, not as “confidence builders” for Border Patrol, as Defense Secretary Mattis suggested, but locked and loaded. This is an invasion, plain and simple. Why are we even discussing how many of these applications we should process? What ever happened to the promise to use Trump’s inherent and delegated authority to shut down all border migration for the time being?

The Trump administration deserves credit for its decision yesterday to shut down all northbound lanes and half the pedestrian crossings into the San Ysidro crossing at Tijuana. That will slow down the pace, but still, why are we taking in invaders at any pace? And why is the DOJ even showing up in two separate lawsuits lodged by the ACLU on behalf of invaders, when the most unassailable case law says that A) the president controls who comes into the country; B) foreign nationals have no standing to sue; and C) courts have no jurisdiction to second-guess the executive on exclusions? If after 130 years of settled law on this issue, we are going to allow California judges to destroy our border, that is the ultimate government shutdown.

And this is just the problem with the caravan at the points of entry. The larger problem is the invasion of hundreds of thousands between the points of entry who are helping the drug cartels prosper. In just two days last week, over 650 illegals were apprehended in the Yuma sector. This is just one sector, which means that the pace of the broader border invasion has intensified to well over 1,000 apprehensions a day. And that means there are at least as many we don’t apprehend.

I spoke with Sheriff Leon Wilmot of Yuma County yesterday, and he was frustrated that everyone is missing the point about the lawfare. “We already have a fence here, and it worked fine during Operation Streamline last decade, when we prosecuted 100 percent of the border crossers rather than processing them. But now they are just hanging off the fence and surrendering themselves to border agents.” He told me about women “dropping babies off the fence” and breaking limbs. His sheriff’s deputies must deal with the medical emergencies. “None of these folks are being prosecuted. My deputies are the ones who have to take those rape and robbery reports because the feds refuse to do their jobs.”

Meanwhile, drugs continue to pour over the Arizona border. While most of the drug operations in recent years have been in the Tucson sector, Sheriff Wilmot, who is also the chairman of the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, has seen an increase in drugs in Yuma in recent months. “Cartels are exploiting the situation in remote areas by backpacking in meth while border agents are busy dealing with the family units hanging off the fence. They are also exploiting juveniles – both the unaccompanied aliens and the American citizens who have family in Mexico but cross over to go to school on our side of the border.” He lamented that the feds will do nothing about the teenage drug smugglers and that the cartels are fully aware of that.

Now, if the jailbreak bill passes, the traffickers will enjoy multiple leniencies. And a number of sanctuary cities are giving taxpayer funding for “free” legal counsel for illegal aliens. If you or I were attacked by illegal aliens, we’d need to marshal our own resources to seek justice, yet they can invade for free.

Rather than waste the final month of GOP control of the trifecta of government on promoting a bill that releases these very drug traffickers from prison, Trump should shoot for the moon on immigration in the December budget bill. Unless he demands not just full funding for the wall and border patrol, but clarity in statute on asylum, UACs, sanctuary cities, and interior enforcement, his presidency is done, and we will face the ultimate government shutdown: the end of our sovereignty. Unless Trump leverages his veto until Congress reiterates existing law – that courts have no jurisdiction over border security – he should just step down and allow the ACLU to run our border.