March 29, 2024
The executive branch’s impermissible, unequal application of its immigration supremacy
By Andrea Widburg
The 14th Amendment explicitly ensures that states cannot treat similarly situated individuals differently. The Fifth Amendment implicitly ensures that the federal government also cannot treat similarly situated individuals differently. It seems to me that an argument can be made that the executive branch of the federal government also cannot treat similarly situated political entities (states and cities) differently. If that’s correct, the Biden administration cannot simultaneously allow sanctuary regions to violate immigration law by hiding illegal aliens while insisting that Texas may not violate immigration law by preventing people from illegally entering America.
When Congress ratified the 14th Amendment, it included an explicit equal protection clause to ensure that the recently defeated Confederate states did not treat black and white residents differently:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [Emphasis added.]
For almost 100 years, Democrats in those same states ignored that prohibition until the Civil Rights Act gave it teeth. Now, one can argue that Democrats continue to ignore that prohibition when it comes to political activity, prosecuting those with whom they disagree and giving a pass to those whose ideas they support. But I digress…
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/the_executive_branch_s_impermissible_unequal_application_of_its_immigration_supremacy.html
