Crosstalk: January 4, 2019

America is mourning the loss of a police officer in California who came to the U.S. legally and was allegedly killed by an illegal alien. Just days ago in Knoxville, the son of the fire captain was reportedly killed by an illegal alien with no driver’s license or insurance.

These are not isolated incidents but instead are being replicated across our nation. Over 1 million identity thefts, homicides, thefts, driving under the influence, rapes and other atrocities have been attributed, not to all, but to many who are in our nation illegally.

President Trump has said that to defend our nation and to protect our borders we need a wall to stop those who are entering illegally. At present we have a partial shut-down of the federal government due to democratic opposition to the wall and failure to come to an agreement on this issue. While debate continues, some state governors have been issuing pardons for some illegals who could be deported for their crimes, but instead are being let go.

Joining Jim to tackle this controversial issue was Mark Krikorian. Mark is a nationally recognized expert on immigration issues serving as the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. They are an independent, non-partisan research organization examining and critiquing the impact of immigration on the United States. He’s testified numerous times before Congress and has published articles in many outlets.

Mark began by explaining a key point. It’s not that these individuals have committed certain acts because they’re illegal aliens. It’s that these people should not have been here and in many cases the authorities knew about them and chose not to deport them. So Mark believes it’s an issue of state governments responsibility and their interfering with immigration law enforcement.

He cited California as the worst. In their case, local sheriffs and police departments are not allowed to communicate about such individuals with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unless the person they have has already committed murder or rape. The problem with this procedure is that such individuals have already committed smaller crimes. As Mark noted, ‘Nobody goes from a choir boy to a murderer overnight.’ So sanctuary laws take away the ability of law enforcement to preserve the safety of the public by allowing ICE to deport people for lesser crimes. This means the government officials who put such policies in place share the responsibility for the victimization or deaths resulting from such crimes.

Mark isn’t expecting much that’s good from the House of Representatives now under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi. Regarding immigration, he believes the Democrats have become radicalized and will attempt to cut funding for ICE and therefore prevent them from being able to detain illegal immigrants. ICE will therefore have to let illegal aliens go and hope that under the honor system they’ll show up when it’s time for deportation after their cases are wrapped up in court, which of course, never happens.

Jim played an interesting audio cut of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer from 2009 where he sounds like President Trump today concerning immigration. Why the about-face from Senator Schumer? Is it because they don’t want President Trump to get credit for immigration success and a wall?

How effective would a wall really be? Where do we go from here? Should the Republicans let the stand-off continue? Mark helps provide the answers on this critical, national security issue and Crosstalk callers lend their views as well.