The Sanctuary Movement and the Doctrine of Nullification

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, California's Legislature has forbidden local governments from cooperating with Federal immigration authorities, and has even gone so far as to forbid private citizens from volunteering information to Federal law enforcement under threat of criminal prosecution. Government officials have alerted criminal illegal aliens of impending ICE raids and placed an illegal immigrant on a governing body.

Mr. Speaker, these actions invoke the doctrine of nullification, the discredited principle that any State or local government that doesn't like a Federal law is free to violate it. It formed the central legal argument that the Southern Confederacy used in its attempt to tear our Federal Union apart. It ignores the supremacy clause of the Constitution, the enumerated powers of Congress, and the exclusive jurisdiction given the courts to adjudicate disputes involving the States.

When South Carolina used this doctrine in 1832 to ignore a Federal tariff, President Andrew Jackson sent warships to Charleston harbor, threatened to hang the instigators, and declared that nullification was ``incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.''

Jackson and, later, Lincoln understood how toxic this doctrine is to the rule of law and to the fundamental principles of federalism. If allowed to stand, the Constitution becomes impotent, our laws become mere suggestions, and the Federal Union itself disintegrates.

Like their Confederate predecessors, the California secessionists assert the 10th Amendment with no apparent understanding of it. The 10th Amendment reserves to the States powers not delegated to the Congress. Jurisdiction over immigration law is explicitly reserved to Congress and is thus denied the States. The supremacy clause is equally clear that the laws made within the constitutional authority of the Federal Government are the supreme laws of the land.

There is good reason for immigration law to be in Federal hands. As Attorney General Sessions explained in Sacramento a few weeks ago, if our immigration laws are not to be enforced, then our national borders mean precisely nothing. Nations that either cannot or will not defend their borders simply aren't around very long. The open borders advocated by California officials are suicidal for any nation.

Our Nation of immigrants depends on the enforcement of our immigration laws. A nation that is founded of immigration must be able to regulate the flow and set the conditions of immigration. That is what promotes and protects the process of assimilation, the glue that holds together a nation drawn from every continent.

Assimilation assures that uniquely American traditions and values--a common language, a common culture, and a common devotion to American constitutional principles--are preserved. Our immigration laws welcome those from around the world, but they also unite us as a people. Illegal immigration undermines the process of assimilation and makes a mockery of the millions of legal immigrants who have obeyed our laws and done everything our country has asked.

California officials claim that they are not defying Federal law, but only refusing to use State resources to enforce it. Well, Federal law is crystal clear: ``A Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit or in any way restrict any government entity or official from sending to or receiving from the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.''

Yet that is precisely what California's nullification acts do.

They also claim they are trying to preserve the trust of the illegal immigrant community to report crimes.

Well, does this mean that anyone who reports a crime or talks to a police officer should be immune from arrest for the crimes that they may have committed?

And what about protecting the rest of our community from criminal illegal aliens in our midst?

The Constitution commands the executive to ``take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' That means all laws, including our immigration laws.

For all its sanctimony, the sanctuary movement's principal legal argument springs from the same poisoned fountainhead that almost destroyed our Nation in the Civil War. Jackson and Lincoln understood that it must be confronted and defeated. President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have made it clear that this administration does, too.

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