Undermining ICE is really a big part of the Democrat Party agenda at this point. Today the Washington Post has a story about efforts to run out the clock on new ICE detention center using, among other things, environmental reviews. Progressives hope that if they can block progress until the new congress arrives, they'll be able to stop the facilities from ever being built.
With roughly seven weeks until a Democratic majority takes over Congress, San Antonio is using a lawsuit to stall the Trump administration’s plan to turn a warehouse into a detention center for 1,500 immigrants...
The city sued last month to stop work there until the federal government studies its effects on its neighborhood, joining nearly a dozen other cities, states and nonprofit groups to challenge such plans in court...
The city, like others that have sued, argues that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has skipped legally required environmental reviews. The argument has already slowed the agency’s plans elsewhere: A federal judge in Maryland recently blocked a similar warehouse conversion on the same grounds. ICE has paused or dropped plans in at least five other states.
San Antonio is a big city with over 1.5 million people but a significant number of them are here illegally. Elected Democrats don't care about that. They believe if they can run out the clock, they can block the construction plans permanently. Not everyone agrees with the plan.
Two council members who lean conservative, Marc Whyte and Misty Spears, disagreed with their colleagues on the question.
“Federal law controls immigration, and City Hall has no business interfering,” they said in a joint statement. “Our residents sent us here to keep them safe, fix our infrastructure and make San Antonio a better place to live. Washington sets immigration policy. We’ve got more than enough work to do right here at home.”
Democrats were all about leaving immigration to the feds when Joe Biden was doing nothing and Texas was trying to stop people crossing the border. 60 Minutes made a point of putting Gov. Abbott on the spot back in 2024.
Now that Trump is in charge of immigration, it's not just states but cities that are trying to set their own immigration policy. Democrats will of course have no problem with this, so long as they win.
In the comments, the author of this story includes a couple of things that somehow didn't make it into his story. One is a quote calling the facility a "concentration camp" and the other is some skepticism that the plan will work.
I have been tracking plans to convert a sprawling warehouse into an ICE detention center in San Antonio for weeks now. One thing is clear. The Democratic sweep in state and national politics in the recent midterms has injected hope to local communities trying to stop this project and others like it. But it remains to be seen what the Democrats can actually do once they take power early next year in a divided government. Still, local officials like Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, a San Antonio council member who represents the neighborhood, oppose ICE's plans. During a recent press conference he said: “Whether you call it a detention center or a processing center, our community does not want a concentration camp anywhere in our country, much less our city."
In his comment, progressive Democrats are both more extreme and less realistic than in his story. I doubt that was accidental. Most of the comments from readers support getting rid of ICE, but not all.
The Democrats have made it clear that they have no problem if Federal Law is broken and shredded as long as it is immigration law. So this is no surprise.
The bad old days of the Biden administration are coming back. Democrats may not intend that as the outcome but all of their instincts (defunding ICE, a kinder approach to migrants who sneak across the border) will produce the same outcome in a matter of months unless the president can restrain them. If Democrats manage to elect a president in 2028, the Biden years could look like the good old days by comparison to what comes next.