We’ve been ignoring the chatter about Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin messing with customs and immigration staffers at O’Hare International Airport as a political cudgel against Chicago’s sanctuary city policies because we’ve struggled to believe the honorable secretary could even countenance actually doing something that ridiculous. But the threats have been persistent enough that we’ve started to worry we’ve been giving him too much credit.
This had seemed to us like a lot of political grandstanding and posturing that could not possibly happen. Surely, a Republican administration would see that international business and tourism relies on efficient airport processing and that the vast majority of people passing through O’Hare have no stake either way in this city’s policies. They simply want to get where they are going as expeditiously as possible, are paying handsomely for the privilege through a whole buffet of fees the feds already have attached to the process, and rightly expect their government to prize efficiency and freedom of movement over partisan politics.
Americans value being free to move around, including beyond the nation’s borders.
Moreover, if the concern is ensuring people don’t bring in drugs and travelers’ compliance with immigration law, as all reasonable people should support, that surely would call for adding more resources at O’Hare, not fewer.
So, as with so much about this administration, this is naked hardball intimidation by Mullin, who seems perfectly fine with the collateral damage including at the airlines, American and United, whose employees invest so much in this airport and this community. We’d imagine most of his rank-and-file employees at the Department of Homeland Security also find this unacceptable and contrary to their mission to keep this country lawful and safe.
The secretary is free to rail against sanctuary city laws all he likes in his public comments, and, of course, the Trump administration is similarly free to make its case in the courts. The administration can endorse candidates more to the president’s liking (it is going gangbusters there) and try to persuade Americans of the wisdom of its views. But just as the president was duly elected, as we have noted several times when Democrats forget that inconvenient truth, so too were the governor of Illinois, the state’s legislature, Chicago’s City Council and Chicago’s mayor. Like all Americans, Mullin is free to work to defeat them at the ballot box and thereby remove the sanctuary city policies along with them. But the people have spoken, and the law is the law.
Alas, Secretary Mullin is confusing all of that with doing his sworn job.
Any fool can see that removing customs and immigration resources at O’Hare would achieve nothing other than angering travelers and frontline employees alike. And hardening local resolve.
So by all means maintain the rhetorical bluster, Mr. Secretary, if that floats your boat, but don’t even think of going beyond and messing with our very efficient and impressive airport.
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