Trump About to Sign Bill That Drastically Limits His Ability to Build a Wall and Deport Illegals

He'll also declare a national emergency, but this bill itself restricts his ability to move money around to build the wall.

Fox live viewer here.

You know, a long time ago, I knew a guy who was a senior legislative staffer for a Republican congressman.

He told me that Democrats routinely build traps and poison pills into bills. Sometimes, for example, they'll pretend to concede a legal point to Republicans, but then they'll deliberately write the law in such an aggressive way that they know a liberal interest group will challenge it as unconstitutional and easily win, because it was written to be unconstitutional.

And thus, the "concession" granted by the Democrats disappears like morning mist, but the concessions granted by Republicans -- usually about money -- remain.

The Democrats win it all.

But you probably knew that. And that's not the point I'm making.

Here's the point I'm making:

I asked him why Republicans don't take this crap out of bills -- are they incompetent?

"No," he told me. "They know they're in there. They want them there. They want the credit for having gotten what appears to be a conservative victory, but they're actually liberal-leaning (or at least they fear a liberal backlash at home) and they want Democrats to 'steal' their victory away."

So anyway, this guy was always trying to take this garbage out of bills, and his Republican colleagues were fighting to keep this shit in.

He told me this like 12, 13 years ago. He is who he says he is (his resume is genuine) and he never gave me reason to think he wasn't generally honest.

Failure Theater.

And now I fear that Trump has been enlisted as a Lead in this latest performance of Failure Theater, scripted by "Republicans" who pretend to be conservative but ho are actually very much aligned with the urban cosmopolitan liberals.

Krikorian points out the Democrat traps, which were almost certainly agreed to by McConnell and Co.

[T]he news that the Dems agreed to $1.375 billion for the construction of "primary pedestrian fencing" (i.e., high barriers, not the low ones intended simply to stop vehicles, in places where there’s none now) seemed like a win.

It's not. That’s because the bill allows the fencing to be built only in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in South Texas. It's surely needed there, but real barriers are also needed elsewhere, such as the parts of the Arizona or New Mexico borders where there’s only vehicle fencing.

But the Democrats had a reason for this limitation. The bill states:

[paraphrase: Fencing can only be built with the permission of local mayors]

In other words, local governments would have an effective veto over whether barriers would be constructed. And which party controls all local government in South Texas? Go ahead, look it up, I'll wait. Rio Grande City is the least Democratic community in the area, and even there voters supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 by more than three to one.

So the border itself is in Democrat hands, and you need the support of Democrat local leaders to build the wall.

This means, of course, that no walls may be built.

Furthermore, this scotches Trump's (claimed) plan to do this by Emergency order, because legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by the President would supersede the vague general powers the President would claim under the various statutes concerning national emergencies.

The specific trumps the general. The general powers conferred by statute for emergency authorization would be limited by the quite-specific limitations in the very spending bill Trump is signing.

Trump would sign a piece of paper forbidding him to do that which he claims he will next do on his own authority.

Krikorian continues... and it gets even worse.

Basically, Trump would give up any ability to deport most illegal aliens.

The second poison pill is even worse. Section 224 states:

None of the funds provided by this act...may be used by the Secretary of Homeland Security to place in detention, remove, refer for a decision whether to initiate removal proceedings, or initiate removal proceedings against a sponsor, potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien child.

In other words, this would mean that ICE cannot detain or remove anyone who has effectively any relationship with an "unaccompanied" minor -- either because they’re sponsors, in the same household as sponsors, or even just "potential sponsors" (or in the household of potential sponsors!) of such a child.

There are already a huge number of Unaccompanied Alien Children in the US. Each is now a human shield protecting anyone in who could even potentially be a sponsor in the future from deportation.

And of course this makes UACs, who have already been Golden Tickets into the US, that much more valuable, and they will therefore become Standard Traveling Gear for all illegal aliens.

Trump must refuse to sign this bill, demand Congress pass a one-week funding CR, demand Congress strip this bullshit out of the bill and then resubmit it.

Or else he's selling us out. And he can't pretend he doesn't know -- he knows.

We've seen Failure Theater performed enough times. We don't need to see it again.

And let me say this about that cocksucker McConnell: this rat bastard and saboteur is many things, but he is not stupid and he is not uninformed about legislation.

He knows this stuff is in the bill.

He helped put it there, and he's a key part of the sales effort to lie to the rubes once again and tell them it's not in there.

Until we pass it, and then, oops! Tricked again! Those darned Democrats got us, but if you send us money and vote extra hard for us, we promise, next time we'll get 'em....

posted by Ace of Spades at 10:33 AM

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