New Orleans Put your head in your hands for a second, because this is almost mind blowing. Yes, we’re talking about the latest confusion about the Trump administration’s immigration policy or policies or whatever you would call this mayhem and mess.
Over recent days word slipped out that some of the rabid, mouth foaming aides, like Stephen Miller, wanted to put migrants and their families crossing the southern US border with Mexico onto buses and pack them out to so-called sanctuary cities. This was supposed to be a punishment of some kind for these cities because of their unwillingness to act as an unpaid local police force for a fraught federal immigration policy. Everyone involved at ICE, Homeland Security, and the White House then denied that this was a policy recommendation or anything more than some crazy spitballing fueled by too much caffeine. Just fake news by a biased, liberal press.
In short, never a real proposal, just a wild hair, until…President Trump, who increasingly is infamous for never rejecting a bizarre proposal if it can divide and inflame his base, seized the idea as his own and started insisting that, yes, roll up the buses, and send the migrants from south Texas and southern Arizona to sanctuary cities. At least do so for several news cycles.
Here’s what I say. Call his bluff. Please, please President Trump, send these desperate migrant families seeking asylum, opportunity, and safety to the cities of America, especially sanctuary cities, where they will finally be supported and cared for with the historically generous and open-handed spirit of the real America. Get them out of tented detention centers, hot and dusty, or repurposed Walmart stores in south Texas, and let go where there are jobs, social services, and people who know that we need new workers and fresh blood to build America. Let them come to the cities that have been built and welded together by immigrants for generations. Let them go anywhere as long as you get them out of border detention camps!
Some mayors of US cities have the right idea and have condemned Trump’s attempt to use migrant families as political pawns in his bitter, hateful, demagogic campaign posturing. Mayors in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other places like Montgomery County, Maryland, that have large immigrant populations have said, hey Mr. President, send them over here.
Cities and towns throughout the United States are crying for population to fill jobs, students for schools so they won’t have to close, customers for stores, and families to pay taxes. How about putting the welcome sign on the city limits in these communities so that the Trump buses know where to pull in, stop, and unload families to a real home rather than a prison camp?
Make Trump do the right thing, even if it’s for the wrong reason. Let sanctuary cities be real sanctuaries. Please.
New Orleans Let’s face it from south Florida to the Rio Grande border between Mexico and the United States is a long haul, a minimum of 1500 miles, twenty or more hours in a car, and god only knows how long if you are running or walking, but, hey, who would do that? It turns out that Juan Soto, a musician and artist from Fort Meyers, Florida would do exactly that.
