And now in the latest civil war news...

The Trump administration is deploying law enforcement tactical units from the southern border as part of a supercharged arrest operation in sanctuary cities across the country, an escalation in the president’s battle against localities that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement. The specially trained officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to boost the enforcement power of local ICE officers, according to two officials who are familiar with the secret operation. Additional agents are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J. Among the agents being deployed to sanctuary cities are members of the elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, which acts essentially as the SWAT team of the Border Patrol. With additional gear such as stun grenades and enhanced Special Forces-type training, including sniper certification, the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records. The unit’s work often takes place in the most rugged and swelteringly hot areas of the border. It can involve breaking into stash houses maintained by smuggling operations that are known to be filled with drugs and weapons.

The lack of local law enforcement cooperation with ICE means that personnel are going head to head with gangs, some heavily armed and extremely dangerous, while being quite uncertain of local backup. It's a bizarre situation in which federal law enforcement has to operate on American soil as if they're in Fallujah or Kabul, and even worse because of the overt opposition of local authorities.

So dispatching tactical units makes sense. But it's also a bit of a civil war situation in which militarized units are operating in secessionist territories against the overt opposition of local authorities who, like the Taliban or Al Qaeda, have penalized cooperation.

The Border Patrol squads will be charged with backing up ICE agents during deportation operations and standing by as a show of force, the officials said. ICE leadership requested the help in sanctuary jurisdictions because agents there often struggle to track down undocumented immigrants without the help of the police and other state and local agencies.

As a sidenote, during coverage of President Trump's State of the Union, it was sad to see FOX News refer to "undocumented immigrants" in its chyron. It wasn't all that long ago that this Orwellian euphemism was being adopted by the media.

The next step will be empowering ICE to actually enter homes and make arrests.