Sanctuary!

El Cenizo, TX, a town of 5300 on the Mexican border which really is a sanctuary city, officially, and kind of scared that migrants are going to get bused there because they really don't have anyplace to keep them. Via Texas Public Radio.

Realized something hilarious about Trump's immigration policy this morning, when a White House communications flack called Adam Kennedy was on the radio defending it:

INSKEEP: I want to understand this idea of busing people to sanctuary cities. This is an idea of busing people to sanctuary cities. This is an idea - according to the reporting, which I think the White House has acknowledged - that was knocked down by staff, knocked down by Homeland Security lawyers as possibly illegal. Why did they find it to be possibly illegal?

KENNEDY: Well, first of all, I think there was a very narrow option being looked at originally. When the president heard about this idea, he was very interested. And now there is more expansive options being looked at. And I think the real question is, why should the same four cities along the border face the brunt of illegal immigration day in and day out when we have numerous cities across this country that, through their rhetoric and policies, say they want more illegal immigration?

As you can see, there's no way he's going to explain why it's possibly illegal, because it's certainly illegal (as I was saying, it would be hugely expensive, and Congress won't appropriate the funds). I think the four cities are San Diego, El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville, all of which are sort of sanctuary cities, though the mayors of Laredo and Brownsville really wish we wouldn't say so. I don't know what kind of "rhetoric and policies" he would be talking about; of course since his job is trolling, not defending any actual policies, he doesn't have to explain himself. But the thing that really made me laugh was when he was trying to claim that the president was doing something positive:

INSKEEP: And different and better visa rules? I mean, why wouldn't the president be putting his effort into actually changing some of the laws that he complains about?

KENNEDY: Steve, the president's been advocating this for two years. He's advocating for closing different loopholes that force catch and release to be the policy of this country, which he doesn't like, which he opposes; for changing credible fear standards so that we're not, over and over again, seeing 90 percent of the people rejected by asylum courts. The president's been advocating for changes to stop this catch-and-release policy, really, since the beginning. So the two things you've said - more resources and changes to our laws - are exactly what the president wants.

Actually they succeeded in ending "catch-and-release" with the "zero tolerance" policy they began implementing two years ago. I'm sure they must have told the president that he'd changed things already, though perhaps because it was Sessions's accomplishment Trump refused to listen. This was also the basic reason for the border crisis, as I've said before, since because the government was stopping the asylum seekers from joining relatives and friends (many or most living in "sanctuary cities") while they awaited their hearings, it now had to take care of them, at the same time as observing the Flores Agreement rule of not holding minors apart from parents or guardians longer than 20 days, hence the cages and the tent cities and the enormous backups (which they made worse by deliberately slowing the processing in various ways—

Actually, you know what "catch-and-release" used to do? It distributed all these people to sanctuary cities taking the pressure off San Diego and El Paso in a way that was totally legal and didn't cost taxpayers a dime! "Catch-and-release" did exactly what Trump supposedly wants to do!