Heritage Foundation: Law, ICE Are “Irrelevant” to Biden Administration

From the Daily Signal and the Heritage Foundations comes this article detailing how the current administration is actively working to remove border security – Law, ICE Are “Irrelevant” to Biden Administration

President Joe Biden has been functionally abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from his first day in office.
A year and a half into his presidential term, Biden’s administration is getting bolder and more strategic, gutting ICE resources and funding, doing everything it can to stop immigration enforcement, and directing ICE lawyers to close tens of thousands of illegal aliens’ cases.
Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas continue to welcome record numbers of illegal immigrants at the border every day and refuse to protect the homeland (causing states such as Texas to take unprecedented measures to protect their residents).
Then, they take it a step further by refusing to detain or deport illegal immigrants once they are here. (Mayorkas has told ICE “that unlawful presence is not grounds for removal.”)
They have no problem stating their intentions:

From Day One, Biden got to work demoralizing the ICE workforce. The Washington Post reported in May of 2021:

‘It’s a weird, frustrating time,’ said one ICE official, who is not authorized to speak to reporters, describing a climate of distrust. ‘It feels like the administration doesn’t have our backs.’

Just as quickly, the administration largely defunded ICE, making it next to impossible for the agency to do its job.
And despite a federal court last month vacating Biden and Mayorkas’ latest attempt to radically limit lawful immigration enforcement, it’s hard to believe the administration will comply and not push back. It has a well-documented track record of ignoring court orders and acting as though it’s above the law.
To make matters worse, Biden’s DHS is on track to let 1 million deportable illegal immigrants off the hook through “de facto amnesty.” This irresponsible direction not only compromises public safety, but also leaves illegal aliens without any sort of official determination of status or directions for how to proceed.
Most recently, Biden’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued June 24 policy guidance reinterpreting the law and, in effect, waiving explicit language in the Immigration and Naturalization Act stating that illegal aliens who were previously “unlawfully present” for at least six months are barred from returning to the U.S. for three or 10 years after “departure or removal.”
In short, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will approve of prior lengthy illegal presence.
What’s more, the Biden administration is sending the message that if deportable illegal aliens have willingly left or been removed from the United States, they can enter again unlawfully and stay in the interior of the U.S. as many days as they wish.
It also opened the door for illegal aliens whose applications were previously denied on these inadmissibility grounds to submit a motion to reopen their case any time before Dec. 27. (Normally, a motion to reopen must be filed within 30 days of a decision.)
One of the highlights in the Citizenship and Immigration Services policy alert states: “a noncitizen’s location during the statutory 3-year or 10-year period and the noncitizen’s manner of return to the United States during the statutory 3-year or 10-year period are irrelevant (emphasis added) for purposes of determining inadmissibility under INA 212(a)(9)(B).”
You read that right: The written law is “irrelevant” to the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, the administration continues to refuse to release the congressionally required ICE Enforcement and Removal Report for fiscal year 2021.
The most obvious conclusion is that the Biden administration wants to effectively do away with ICE and immigration enforcement, hide the glaring issues that come along with nonenforcement policies, make it appear that all is well at the border, and dodge all responsibility by escaping congressional oversight and the criticism of the American people.
Although the president himself says he’s “working on” abolishing ICE, actions speak even louder than words.
Biden’s border policies and directives are some of the clearest examples proving that he bows to the demands of far left, open-borders activists. Day in and day out, this administration’s actions reveal nothing but disregard for national security and public safety, and disdain for the enforcement of the rule of law in this country.

Charles Carroll Society: Heritage Foundation Debates the Cold Civil War

A short article and fifteen minute video from the Charles Carroll Society – Heritage Foundation debates the Cold Civil war | Establishment Types now taking the Patriots community seriously .

The patriot community has been saying to establishment Republicans that we are in something other than “politics of the normal.” BTW, patriot is not a person who is overly “patriotic” you can love your country but distrust your government. Patriots are people who are libertarian-leaning, conservative Christians who are anti-federalist, not anti-government.

Some call our current situation a proto-insurgency; I call it a “cold civil war.” I have explained that we are already in a non-violent civil war since 2013. In my post from November 19, 2012, titled The Haze has Lifted I said “The divide is so deep I would call it a Cold Civil War between these two groups. By Cold Civil War I mean, a non-violent (cold) intense internal struggle (civil) that is not politics as normal (war). I believe this can be considered a “war” because people have compromised on all they are willing to compromise on.” I am unsure if I was the first to use this term, but I was one of the first.

The reason I do not say we are in a “hot” civil war is that a civil war is defined as over 1,000 deaths a year due to political differences within a country. We have a lot of violence, but we have not descended to this level yet…

Click here to see the entire article and two videos at the Charles Carroll Society.

‘You’re Fired, Judge’: Sanctioning Federal Judges for Bad Behavior

The subject of judicial misconduct having come up recently in local conversation, the following American Thinker article from last year provides some additional thinking/acting points.

The Constitution only allows federal judges to serve during “good behavior.” This “good behavior” limitation on judicial tenure derives from one of the oldest and most well-established legal principles of our founding and English legal history. This limitation on appointed officials holding office pervades our founding revolutionary-era state constitutions. It’s time for Trump to consider activating the power of the political branches to fire badly behaving judges. Time to drain the judicial swamp.

Recent Obama appointees, including associates of Obama since law school, earned the enmity of a wide range of legal and scholastic critics over their travel ban rulings. How bad was it? Even #NeverTrumpers and liberal lawyers came out in a chorus of condemnation against the Hawaii and Maryland judicial actions. #NeverTrump lawyer David French, lawyers at National Review, and liberal-leaning law professor Jonathan Turley each criticized the decision. Liberal Democratic law professor Alan Dershowitz noted that the judges would have never done this to Obama, even if the executive order was identical. Anti-Trump critic David Frum of the Atlantic criticized the decision. Even five Ninth Circuit judges, sua sponte, amended their prior statements to criticize these judges’ actions as without precedent.

Why the unison of condemnation? Because, as one law professor noted, much of the Hawaii judge’s actions were based on judicial acts of “misleading.” That’s polite, diplomatic, I-might-be-in-front-of-that-judge-someday way of saying that some of these anti-Trump, anti-travel ban judges were not honest. If private lawyers had acted the way these judges did, they could be sanctioned and could lose their license and livelihoods, be thrown out of court, or even charged with a crime. That is why Judge Alex Kozinski authored two amendments to his prior dissent to specifically criticize the basis of the Hawaii judge’s ruling.

What can Trump or Congress do about it, if they believe these federal judges exceeded their authority and engaged in disreputable conduct?

The Constitution provides two restrictions on the tenure of a federal judge: first, if they misuse or abuse their office, then the Constitution, under Article II, section 4, authorizes Congressional quasi-criminal remedies of impeachment. The impeachment provision applies to the President “and all civil officers of the United States” whenever their conduct constitutes “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Historically, the latter provision has been rejected for purely private conduct. That is why both Alexander Hamilton and Richard Nixon were not impeached for either tax evasion or financial misdeeds, though both were accused of one or the other. Bill Clinton successfully argued against conviction on the grounds his perjury, though in office, derived from a purely personal matter, rather than a presidential one.

The Constitution provides a second, separate restriction on the tenure of a federal judge: Article III of the Constitution limits a judge’s tenure to continuous “good behavior…”

Continuing reading the article at American Thinker by clicking here

The Heritage Foundation has its own brief essay on the good behavior clause .

…Still, both the language and the weight of historical evidence indicate that the Good Behavior Clause was intended to refer to life tenure rather than to a distinct standard for removal. However, just as the Good Behavior Clause reminds the other branches that the judiciary is truly independent, it also reminds judges that life tenure is not a license for the wanton or the corrupt. It is in this sense both a shield and a sword—an affirmation of judicial independence and a reservation for judicial removal.