Democrats now risk a midterm-elections fiasco if they can’t let go of their anti-ICE obsession, and their related insistence on protecting even violent-criminal illegal immigrants from deportation.
Exhibit A is the demented refusal to fund TSA as airport lines stretch past the four- and five-hour mark.
Not to mention the less-obvious (at least until it lets a terror attack succeed) outrage of refusing to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security while the country is at war with the world’s top promoter of terrorism.
On Thursday, Democrats refused a deal to fund all DHS except ICE deportation work — demanding that the bill still lock in their pet reforms (no masks ever, no use of administrative warrants, etc.) of work they wouldn’t actually be funding.
It was one thing for Dems to think this a wise tactic when they triggered this shutdown, with the Minneapolis mess still fresh — but that was seven weeks ago.
Team Trump has backed off Kristi Noem’s over-the-top approach and fired her; normal Americans no longer see any sign of “ICE out of control”; they just see those TSA lines.
How fresh do Dems want those images to be in voters’ minds this November?
Add in the regular news stories about horrific crimes committed by illegals that Democrats are protecting despite prior felonies — and sometimes protect after a rape or murder.
As in Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s “six months, time served” deal for the perv who raped a teen boy in a bodega bathroom.
Or the Chicago horror story: A Venezuelan illegal, admitted in the Biden years then shielded by sanctuary laws, allegedly murdered Loyola student Sheridan Gorman while she was out for a walk.
Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson offered no comfort to Gorman’s family nor any recognition that open borders and sanctuary laws are insane.
No: They both blamed President Donald Trump, the politician who has done more than any other to end the border crisis.
And Alderwoman Maria Hadden actually blamed Gorman for “startling” poor Jose Medina-Medina before the killing.
No crime is so heinous that it can dent, even for a second, Dems’ political commitment to ever more illegal immigration.
Voters can’t miss it.
Nor will they overlook how Democrats who just ran as “moderates” immediately jump on the “I ♥ illegals” crazy train.
New Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger instantly banned any law-enforcement cooperation with ICE.
Not to be outdone, her Jersey-girl clone Gov. Mikie Sherrill just signed a law barring ICE agents operating in her state from wearing face coverings.
“We’re not going to tolerate masked roving militias pretending, pretending to be well-trained law enforcement agents,” shrilled Sherrill.
Huh? ICE agents are duly licensed officers of the law; pretending they’re not legit is the same as calling the FBI the enemy.
They cover their faces because the deranged lefties target them for threats, harassment and worse.
Voters will love what they see if Garden State cops obey Sherrill and try to arrest ICE agents over masks.
Other Dems are frothing at the mouth: Texas Rep. Julie Johnson last week raved about “the rogue terroristic attacks that these agents are doing upon the citizens . . . of this country.”
That language is an open invitation to violence against the feds, a la Joshua Jahn, who opened fire at an ICE facility in Texas last September, or the cadre of Antifa terrorists who attacked a different facility last July 4.
Democrats just can’t let go of this madness, when immigration remains among Trump’s strongest issues — even after Minneapolis.
Maybe they thought initially they could leverage Minneapolis to destroy that advantage, but that’s not happening.
Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are smarter than this, but plainly they’re not calling the shots: The folks driving the Democratic Party now are “religiously” convinced that any immigration enforcement at all is fascism.
We’ll see by November if they manage to drive the party right off a cliff.
