America has already had this argument and it has already been soundly rejected, legally and at the bloody point of a gun during the Civil War. In fact, three decades before the war itself, President Andrew Jackson confronted this very same thinking during the first nullification crisis.
To hear Democrats and their progressive allies tell it, what’s happening in Minneapolis and a handful of other cities is so atrocious, abominable, and reprehensible that the usual mechanisms of our democratic simply republic cannot address it. Though every administration before the second incarnation of President Donald J. Trump has relied upon administrative warrants as executed by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol to apprehend illegal aliens subject to deportation, the Trump Administration is doing it differently, some combination of bigger, rougher, and more in your face than earlier efforts even if the end the result is the same. Thus, even agents and officers who served during previous Presidents have been rebranded mask, bloodthirsty thugs who delight in terrorizing and brutalizing their neighbors in the name of King Trump’s fascist goals, to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen’s recent reboot of the classic “Streets of Philadelphia” as “Streets of Minneapolis.” While what passes for the progressive intelligentsia proclaims that the “The Battle for Minneapolis” (The New Yorker) is our “Gettysburg Moment” (The Bulwark), Democrat politicians claim they are fighting a new Civil War and they have no choice except to use their (non existent) power to nullify federal control over immigration enforcement. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz asked during an interview with The Atlantic last week, referencing the assault on a federal fort by Southerners that sparked the Civil War itself. “It’s a physical assault,” he continued. “It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens.” Meanwhile, the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey has vowed to continue refusing to enforce federal laws. After meeting with President Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan in an attempt to negotiate a compromise, he immediately took to X, rejecting anything of the sort. “I shared with Mr. Homan the serious negative impacts this operation has had on Minneapolis and surrounding communities, as well as the strain it has placed on our local police officers.” “I also made it clear that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws, and that we will remain focused on keeping our neighbors and streets safe,” he added.
While one can certainly understand and even to some extent appreciate their passion, this is not their decision to make under our system of government, ironically the very system of government that they proclaimed themselves protectors of in recent years. Instead of out of control agitators storming the streets to obstruct federal policy and state and local politicians refusing to enforce the law, the United States has relied on courts and elections to resolve these disputes for more than a century and half. Indeed, we were relying on them as recently as last year and even early into this one. Despite progressive claims that there are no other possible means to slow or stop President Trump’s immigration agenda, they were having at least some success doing exactly that already. None other than CNN reported on this last week, noting that “The Justice Department and federal courts are struggling to keep up with the exponential increase in federal court cases of immigrants in custody who are challenging their detentions – another result of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies across the country. The cases, in which a person can challenge detention in the jurisdiction where they are physically held, through what’s called a habeas corpus petition, have skyrocketed in Minneapolis and Texas over the past three weeks, several attorneys responding to the surge say and court records show.” According to the outlet, “Since January 1, more than 400 detainees have filed habeas petitions in the federal court in Minnesota, often seeking bond hearings or to be released, according to the court’s public docket. There were just over 125 habeas petitions in the state during all of last year.” In early January, Politico similarly reported that “Hundreds of judges reject Trump’s mandatory detention policy, with no end in sight.” As they put it, “Federal judges are increasingly exasperated by the Trump administration’s effort to lock up nearly everyone facing deportation proceedings — a draconian expansion of decades-old policies that hundreds of courts have rejected as illegal or unconstitutional. More than 300 federal judges, including appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan, have now rebuffed the administration’s six-month-old effort to expand its so-called ‘mandatory detention’ policy, according to a POLITICO analysis of court dockets from across the country. Those judges have ordered immigrants’ release or the opportunity for bond hearings in more than 1,600 cases. And dozens more federal judges have ordered the administration to release immigrants yanked off the street without due process or held for prolonged periods even though no country has agreed to accept them.”
While these cases have not yet led to a “successful nationwide block on the policy,” even Politico acknowledged that “federal appeals courts — or perhaps the Supreme Court — [can] settle the matter conclusively, at least in large swathes of the country” given a little more time as the democratic process plays out. Further, the Trump Administration, while believing the law is on their side, has acknowledged that they will defer to Court rulings on the matter both individually in these habeas corpus cases and as a whole. “Regarding decisions from federal courts about mandatory detention, judicial activists … have been repeatedly overruled by the Supreme Court on these questions,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin explained. “ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land.” Of course, there is also a midterm election coming up this November, when Democrats could recapture the House if historical trends are any indication and perhaps even control of the Senate, which would put them in a much better position to influence federal policy. In the meantime, we know two things. First, that even the Democrats themselves believe the Courts are on option because Minnesota’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, filed an emergency motion seeking to prevent the President from deploying ICE and the border patrol in the state, claiming that Operation Metro Surge was both unconstitutional and unlawful, and seeking an injunction to halt it. Second, we know that at least so far, the Courts have not generally agreed with these assertions despite what may be happening with certain individual cases. The injunction requested by the Attorney General has, in fact, been denied by a Federal judge, Katherine Menendez, who was an appointee of President Joe Biden and is not exactly a fire breathing supporter of the MAGA movement in general or deportations in particular. Despite believing that Operation Metro Surge “has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans,” “There is no clear way for the Court to determine at what point Defendants’ alleged unlawful actions…becomes (sic) so problematic that they amount to unconstitutional coercion and an infringement on Minnesota’s state sovereignty,” she wrote, adding that there is “no precedent for a court to micromanage such decisions.” Previously, Judge Menendez had ruled against the President, attempting to limit the tactics that could be used when protests turned violent, only to be overturned by the Appellate Courts. “If that injunction went too far,” she reasoned, “then the one at issue here—halting the entire operation—certainly would.”
Also at issue in Minnesota is what becomes of illegal immigrants who are arrested at the local and state level. According to current federal law and policy, state and local governments are supposed to inform federal authorities so that the criminal in question can be detained for deportation. Otherwise, ICE or the border patrol needs to find them on the streets, leading to at least some of the recent confrontations that have left at least two people dead. Here, even The New York Times found a “complicated picture” of this in action in Minnesota, writing that “About 30% of the people ICE detained in Minnesota last year were turned over by local jails and prisons, but that number is a lower share than in 39 other states. In Iowa, for example, the figure is 80%.” “In addition, no one was transferred from the state’s largest jail, in Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, the state’s largest city. Local jails in Minnesota have declined or ignored hundreds of the more than 2,000 detainers, requests to hold someone longer in detention until ICE can take custody of them, filed since President Trump took office last January.” As President Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan described it “Like I’ve said many times for the last several years, even before this administration, jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities are sanctuaries for criminals. Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals.” Both he and President Trump have insisted many times that if Governor Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey would properly turn over illegal alien criminals to federal custody, there would be no need for Operation Metro Surge and ICE could withdraw from the streets. Despite the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, they continue to refuse, as cited earlier.
In other words, Democrats believe the situation is so dire that they and they alone can pick and choose which laws to enforce and which policies to follow, but America has already had this argument and it has already been soundly rejected, legally and at the bloody point of a gun during the Civil War. Three decades before the war itself, President Andrew Jackson confronted this very same thinking during the first nullification crisis, when South Carolina declared a new set of tariffs passed in 1828 and 1832, the Tariffs of Abominations and insisted they would not enforce them within their borders. On November 24, 1832, South Carolina passed the “Ordinance of Nullification,” attempting to claim on their own that the tariffs were unconstitutional and therefore void. Much like Democrats today who insist that President Trump has aggressively deployed ICE and the Border Patrol for nefarious reasons beyond immigration enforcement, the Ordinance argued that the tariffs caused injury and oppression, and were not merely “acts laying duties and imposts on foreign imports, but in reality intended for the protection of domestic manufactures and the giving of bounties to classes and individuals engaged in particular employments, at the expense and to the injury and oppression of other classes and individuals.” “We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States…are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens; and all promises, contracts, and obligations, made or entered into, or to be made or entered into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by said acts, and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void.” While Jackson was a Southern Democrat himself and said to be receptive to their view of states rights, he perhaps apocryphally declared that the choice the country was facing was “Union or death” and issued a proclamation of his own while amassing forces on the South Carolina border to force the state to conform to the demands of their Constitutional obligations. As he saw it, “The ordinance is founded, not on the indefensible right of resisting acts which are plainly unconstitutional and too oppressive to be endured, but on the strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution; that they may do this consistently with the Constitution; that the true construction of that instrument permits a State to retain its place in the Union and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional. It is true, they add, that to justify this abrogation of a law it must be palpably contrary to the Constitution; but it is evident that to give the right of resisting laws of that description, coupled with the uncontrolled right to decide what laws deserve that character, is to give the power of resisting all laws.”
Democrats are unironically making the same argument today and remain as wrong as ever. Whether you agree with President Trump’s immigration policy or not, clearly there is no country if every state and the union has a right to resist whatever laws they please and the right to decide that on their own backed by agitators in the streets taking frequently violent aim at law enforcement. That’s why they do not have that right and have never had that right. We are instead bound into a union where it is each state’s duty to conform to federal law as voted upon by Congress and ruled upon by the courts even when they object. Contrary to what passes for conventional wisdom these days, Democrats do not have a monopoly on the law, nor does the progressive view of morality give them the power to overturn it. While they are certainly entitled to their opinion and their passion, and they can make their case in court and in the upcoming midterm elections, they are not in and of themselves the arbiters of either the law or morality, however much they may pretend otherwise. Alas, this appears to be a lesson they must be taught.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 