How About that Executive Action?

By Ed Hoffman

With the stroke of his pen last week, the President of the United States granted 5 million illegal immigrants protection from deportation. If you needed one more provocative dinner topic to make things interesting this Thanksgiving, I suggest looking up from your sweet potatoes, smiling and saying as innocently as possible, “So, how about that executive action?”

No matter how you feel about illegal immigration, what Americans should find troubling is the President’s extreme shift in tone, otherwise known as flip-flopping. In 2011, he claimed to have no legal means of suspending deportations for the “dreamer” children of illegal immigrants. He said, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed…Congress passes the law. The executive branch’s job is to enforce and implement those laws.” He added, “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system, that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”

And yet, here he is: ignoring those mandates and refusing to conform to his appropriate role as President. That means he was either a.) Lying in 2011 when he claimed he could not do anything, b.) Telling the truth then and knowingly defying the law now, or c.) Neither one – just flying by the seat of his pants based on what polling tells him Americans want. No matter which scenario it is, Americans should find it abhorrent that the President of the United States is willfully circumventing our centuries-old checks and balances system because he finds it politically expedient to placate to lawbreakers.

My guest last week was Beth Baumann, a locally-based communications professional who helped produce the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2014 and now writes for the conservative women’s media outlet PolitiChicks. When Beth attended the summer protests in Murrieta as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) drove busses of illegal immigrants into town for processing at the local border patrol station, she spoke with one agent who was deeply disturbed by the situation. He told her the main purpose of the facility is to be a holding tank for the drug traffickers apprehended along the 15 corridor; it is not intended to be a long-term lodging facility for anyone, and fire code dictates that it should only hold 25 people. Yet, the DHS – an agency that was spending $70,000 per flight to move these people from Texas to San Diego – wanted 180 people to stay there at a time. She went on to reveal that medical professionals on the scene were openly concerned about these new arrivals bringing Ebola with them, months before any of us were talking about Ebola. It took days of ardent, yet peaceful protesting (unlike what is taking place in Ferguson, Missouri right now), with people forming physical blockades, in order to send the federal government the message that the city of Murrieta did not want this.

Unfortunately, these measures won’t work for the President’s executive action. All we can do is start priming new candidates for 2016 – people like Governor Scott Walker or Dr. Ben Carson, who actually hold respect for the rule of law.

Ed Hoffman is the host of the Main Event on AM590 which airs Saturday 9:30AM- 10:30AM and Sunday 4:00PM- 5:00PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event AM590.