“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun,” King Solomon famously observed in the Koheleth (Book of Ecclesiastes). Truer words have never been written. Look no further than the present anarchic tumult in Minnesota.
On Jan. 12, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison initiated a lawsuit on behalf of the North Star State, along with municipal co-plaintiffs Minneapolis and St. Paul, against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons, and the rest of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus. In his press conference announcing the suit, Ellison emphasized the same basic arguments as his formal complaint: Namely, that ICE’s enforcement “surge” in Minnesota amounts to a “violation of the Tenth Amendment and the sovereign laws and powers granted to states.”
In essence, Ellison and his Minnesota Democratic Party leadership confreres argue that the constitutional federalism articulated in the Tenth Amendment and its corollary of “states’ rights” can shield the Land of 10,000 Lakes from the long enforcement arm of federal immigration law. Ellison and Minnesota Democrats claim that by declaring their state and cities to be illegal alien “sanctuaries,” they can “nullify” federal immigration law. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before.
Democrats in America have a long and inglorious history of invoking “states’ rights” and shirking federal law. It has never ended well.
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