Immigration and terrorism: Trump continues trading freedom for “safety and security”

In the fallout of last week’s announcement about Donald Trump’s plan to “fix” DACA by granting amnesty and creating a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million so-called DREAMers, Doublethink Donald finds himself once again forced to defend his betrayal to his base.

Never one to admit when he’s wrong, Trump doubled-down on his DACA plans over the weekend by claiming that his obvious lie was simply a part of a grand design to show that it’s the Democrats who lied, not him.

I have offered DACA a wonderful deal, including a doubling in the number of recipients & a twelve year pathway to citizenship, for two reasons: (1) Because the Republicans want to fix a long time terrible problem. (2) To show that Democrats do not want to solve DACA, only use it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2018

Democrats are not interested in Border Safety & Security or in the funding and rebuilding of our Military. They are only interested in Obstruction!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2018

While his attempt at blame-shifting is obvious, I find Trump’s use of the phrase “safety and security” a bit troubling, not because we don’t need it, but because of his apparent willingness to do anything—Constitutional or not—to achieve his idea of what that looks like.

I’ve documented many times how Trump has displayed a dangerous willingness to sacrifice our Constitutional rights on the altar of Big Brother government, all in the name of safety and security when dealing with the illegal immigration crisis.

In Trump’s first year in office, we’ve witnessed the following Constitutionally questionable actions:

• He expanded civil asset forfeiture laws, a violation of our right to due process (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments).
• He launched a plan to create an “off the books” secret global spy network, accountable only to Trump and CIA Director Pompeo.
• He reauthorized FISA702, which allows the government to conduct warrantless searches on Americans and collect massive amounts of electronic data (Fourth Amendment).

On the same day of Trump’s DACA announcement, we received word that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has secured agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database—giving the government new power of real-time location tracking of billions of plates.

While ICE claims that their Big Brother program “is not seeking to build a license place reader database and will not collect nor contribute any data to a national public or private database” it’s important to remember that Republicans said something similar about the data collection practices of the NSA prior to being ruled unconstitutional in court.

One more thing. As I mentioned a few days ago, Trump’s cave with DACA could be a precursor to the creation of a biometric National ID card that will allow the government to track every American. The House bill that will accomplish this is currently in committee.

But hey . . . at least we’ll be safe and secure under Big Brother. Right?

 

David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative, your source for opinion that’s politically incorrect and always “right.” His columns are featured on RedState.com, NOQReport.com, and TheResurgent.com.

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