With the substantial withdrawal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from Minneapolis, a consensus is apparent among journalists of all stripes. The Department of Homeland Security under the leadership Secretary Kristi Noem went too far, the understandable local reaction necessitating a retreat.
“[M]asked and camouflaged feds are skulking away from the debacle” is the way in which Andrew McCarthy characterized the episode in National Review. Illegal Immigration Is a Law Enforcement Problem | National … The vitriol directed at Secretary Noem in such ostensibly right-of-center publications equals or surpasses any received by her predecessor, Alejandro Majorkas, whose personal agency in the previous administration’s immigration catastrophe led to his impeachment.
In reality, it was the resistance perpetrated by mobs, their wealthy backers, and lawless state and local officials and not some zealotry in the Department of Homeland Security that caused the melee and death in Minneapolis. There need have been no confrontations between federal officers and protesters, had the local police been allowed to do their jobs and hold the mob back. This was nothing but sabotage by Democrat scoundrels in high office.
And despite the resolution apparently achieved in Minneapolis by immigration enforcement chief, Tom Homan, matters remain ominous.
It appears, subject to further developments, that the federal government now can only enforce the immigration laws in Democratic states with the consent of state and local officials. The midterm election approaching and polls suggesting that people dislike commotions like that in Minneapolis, the Trump Administration must confront the dilemma of risking another imbroglio or failing to deliver on what was an essential campaign promise.
But of greater significance than pressing electoral concerns and the enforcement of immigration laws is the challenge to the country’s very constitutional structure.
The twin beams that hold up this country’s republican government are federalism and federal supremacy. All powers not expressly ceded to the federal government or deemed necessary in order to effectuate its powers are reserved for the states or the people. The explicit statement of that precept in the Tenth Amendment is undergirded by the allocation of congressional functions in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the limitation on those powers in Section 9, and the granting and limitation of state powers in Article I, Section 10, Article II, Section 1, and Article IV.
Paragraphs two and three of the Constitution’s Article VI, announce the rule of federal supremacy, requiring state acceptance of all powers that are confided to the national government:
The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made , under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judge is every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.