Sanctuary Cities Exposed: The Unconstitutional Loophole | Victor Davis Hanson

Victor, you've talked about sanctuary cities before, they're not just a simple happenstance in America. I think they're dangerous things. But what do you think, my friend? Well, they're unconstitutional, that's for sure, because, and I will just preface my answer with, if Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, conservatives, Republicans adopted the idea of sanctuary cities, a neoconfederate states' rights idea, right out of the mouth of John C. Calhoun, they would do something like this. They would say, the state of Utah, or a city of Casper, Wyoming, or Mobile, Alabama, we declare that we don't honor the Federal Endangered Species Act. We just don't honor it. So if we have a developer, and he's carving out a golf course, and there is a three-eared toad that's an endangered, he's just going to smash him, because we don't honor federal law here. We're not going to cooperate with the EPA. Or if somebody in a county, I'm not picking on states, I'm just doing it randomly, a conservative, but let's say a county in Arkansas said, you know what, I can read the Second Amendment, it says I have a right to bear arms. And I find, in our county, we've decided that it is unconstitutional to make you register a handgun with the federal government. So we are a sanctuary city. And no one in this county in Arkansas is going to register any federal guns. And we're not going to cooperate at all with the ATF if they come in, Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire. If they try to come in here, we're going to protest, we're going to combine, we're going to do everything we can. Well, you can imagine what would happen. A Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton would say, you're an insurrectionist. And they would call out federal troops. Because in the Constitution, it's clear that in matters of federal law, they trump state law. And that is a federal matter, immigration. Somehow, we have now over 600 entities, counties, cities, entire states like California. And that means that when law enforcement arrest, if you're in California, and I've had this happen four or five times, where in the last 40 years, where an illegal alien on a Sunday afternoon or Saturday night, went airborne drunk, and plowed in and took out 10 almond trees or 20 vines. And we heard a big crash. And we went out there and the car was littered with drugs and alcohol bottles and the driver took off. Or sometimes on two occasions, he was there. I called the police. And first of all, I couldn't possess the car, they wouldn't let me tow it away or keep it as to pay for the thousands of dollars of damage. But they didn't. When they took him in and bailed him out, I said, Are you going to deport him? And if he said, No, we're not going to deport him. We can't. I mean, we've had this now for, I guess, 15 years. We're not going to deport him. We don't recognize federal immigration law here in California. And then you say, Well, does federal... Maybe you shouldn't go to Yosemite. Maybe the federal government should say, We own Yosemite, and we don't want you to go into our national park until you honor our national law. You're an American first and a Californian second. But they get away with it. They get lower court judges to rewrite the law. And Donald Trump is the first president, and people should remember that, who are so critical of him. He's the first person to challenge it. And he said he has tried to cut off transportation funds and some federal funds to these cities and entities and counties and states that break federal law. And of course, the lower courts have opposed him. It's a neoconfederate idea. I thought we settled the issue, Jack, with Fort Sumner, which was a federal fort. Lincoln fortified it, and South Carolina just fired on it. And they said, Oh, it's in our proximity. And Lincoln said, No, no, no, no, it's a federal fort. It's federal land. And by the way, post offices and armories in your confederacy don't belong to you. They're federal property. And that was really the pretext of the whole Civil War. The issues were slavery, of course, and states' rights. But the trigger was they were not going to let federal troops occupy federal property, which was illegal. So all of a sudden, I guess the left has turned into right-wing states' right people. And it won't stop until the federal government goes to the Supreme Court and says, You have the right to deny federal funds to entities that break federal law. And believe me, they don't allow any state, any red state, purple state, county to defy federal law.