If you think about Sanctuary Cities, they essentially flout the law by giving sanctuary to those already breaking the law, namely illegal (note the word) immigrants. Republicans introduced and tried to pass a bill that would strip these cities of federal funding until they enforced existing law. One of the results of this willful ignoring of the law was the murder of 32-year-old Kate Steinle, who was shot to death while walking on a San Francisco Pier with her father. Her killer, an illegal alien, had been deported 5 times on multiple felonies and been recently released from the custody of the San Francisco County Jail without being turned over to federal immigration authorities.

The bill offered was a means to force compliance with the law from these cities or have them suffer some consequences:

The bill offered by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., would have cut off law enforcement grants — including money to hire police officers — to more than 300 cities, counties and states with sanctuary policies. The legislation also would have stripped them of community development block grants, which are used to provide housing to low-income and moderate-income families and to help communities recover from natural disasters.

The Democrats, of course, voted to protect the non-citizens here illegally:

Senate Democrats blocked a bill Tuesday that would have punished “sanctuary cities” that protect undocumented immigrants from being turned over to federal agents to face deportation.

Senators voted 54-45 to advance the legislation, falling six votes short of the 60 needed.

The White House tried to put a different spin on it than the obvious:

“The bill would essentially turn the state and local law enforcement into federal immigration law enforcement officials in certain circumstances,” the statement said. “The administration believes that these provisions would lead to mistrust between communities and state and local law enforcement agencies (and) undermine the ability of law enforcement to keep communities safe across the country.”

If ever there was a true example of “double speak”, this is it. The whole point of the bill was to try to actually make our “communities safe” by enforcing the law and removing violent felons, like Kate Steinle’s killer, from the street.  And frankly, the system doesn’t work unless there is cooperation at all levels of law enforcement.  Would the locals turning over a kidnapper to federal authorities somehow cause “mistrust between communities and state and local law authorities?”  Of course not.

Sen. Ted Cruz, however, set the record straight by correctly identifying the problem:

“If Democratic senators choose to value partisan loyalty to the Obama administration over protecting the lives of the children who will be murdered by violent criminal illegal aliens in sanctuary cities…that will provide a moment of clarity,” said Cruz.

Pure partisanship, disguised as good governance (see WH statement) and the lemmings fall in line to give homage to the party. As for the country, well, we haven’t had many statesmen in politics for decades, so it should come as no surprise that this vote was for the party instead of the country.

Oh, and remember this the next time Democrats, any Democrats, start lecturing you on the “rule of law”.

~McQ