[Originally published in the Immaculate Conception Church bulletin on February 5th, 2017]

On Wednesday, February 1, led by the diktat of its mayor, John Cranley, the city council of Cincinnati voted 6-2 to declare Cincinnati as a “Sanctuary city.” Cincinnati police chief Eliot Isaac says: “We will not be enforcing immigration laws.” What does this mean?

National news in the United States has referred to certain cities as “sanctuary cities.” This means that the government officials of these cities have declared that they do not accept and will not enforce our nation’s immigration laws regarding foreigners (i.e. Islamic refugees) who are in our country illegally. The city officials, the police, and the courts will not detain illegal “immigrants,” nor will they report them to the federal authorities, but rather they will protect and shield them from the law and from those who would enforce the law. Thus, they claim they are giving sanctuary to those who are in the United States illegally.

The concept of giving sanctuary is rooted in the Bible. In the Old Law, God provided for places of refuge where those accused of crime would be safe from pursuit and punishment. Thus, to support their distorted and selective notion of compassion, the religious leftists (following the lead of the supreme pontiff of the New Order, Francis) have been invoking Sacred Scripture – falsely, of course – to support the wholesale invasion of once-Christian nations by Islamic refugees. Our hearts go out to these suffering people, the true refugees who are fleeing from the hellish conditions of life in their native Islamic countries. Their plight should make us appreciate all the more that we are citizens of the United States of America. Their own societies have become unlivable because of Islamic law, Shariah, but – far from intending to become Americans in spirit and to follow the laws of the United Sates – many of them (as surveys show) arrive with the intention of following their own Islamic law and even of imposing Shariah law on the United States. For Islam is not just a religion; it is an entire social and legal system. There is no denying it, no escaping it: wherever militant Islam takes root, Shariah law takes root also. Their very religion requires it of them: militant Islam insists that all Islamic refugees are slaves of Allah and all are expected to be agents of Muhammad. How does it help the Muslim refugee who flees the oppression of his native Islamic country to seek a haven in the United States only to bring with him the cruel and oppressive Islamic Shariah law which afflicts his native country and which he intends to inflict on our country? 

Cincinnati has already been unofficially flouting the national law by giving sanctuary to illegal aliens, but the recent declaration of the city council is a blatant statement of defiance against the Trump administration’s orders restricting immigrants from seven Islamic nations for a set time period until the matter can be studied so a carefully reasoned policy can be established. The concern is that the Obama administration opened the United States’ borders for tens of thousands of Islamic immigrants without controls to keep out terrorists and violent criminals.

The controversial immigration policies of the Obama administration were largely put in place by “executive orders.” The use and abuse of such executive orders by recent presidents has set the stage for the imperial president who rules by decree, usurping the rights, duties, and powers of Congress. President Trump is now attempting to use the same means of executive orders to undo the most egregious abuses of the Obama presidency. It is the rightful place of the United States Congress to address, resist, and prevent the abuse of presidents’ executive orders. But it is now the courts in the control of sanctimonious leftist judges which are on the attack. A federal judge has single-handedly overruled the Trump administration’s order for this time period to examine America’s immigration policy regarding the seven militant Islamic countries, and a Democrat Attorney General has hailed that judge’s order as a victory for the United States’ Constitution!

Those of us who know that the United States of America drew together as a Christian nation understand that our nation has the need for prudent laws to defend itself against invasion by a foreign entity and to protect itself against subversion by a hostile ideology. We have the right to expect and to demand that our public officials respect and enforce our laws for the safety and security of our citizens. Those of us who live in the greater Cincinnati area, and who are therefore affected by the decisions made by Cincinnati city council, have the right to speak our minds about this flagrant defiance of law. We who are American citizens have the legal right and the moral duty to speak out in defense of our country and the duty to speak up when the very rule of law is brazenly scorner – and our public officials have the legal and moral obligation to listen. But then, haven’t Mr. Cranley and his conciliar cohorts already told us that they are above the law?

What if we followed his example? What would happen if we would say: “Does not compassion require us to disregard and to defy the laws protecting Planned Parenthood’s abortion chambers?” Suppose we were to storm the gates of the Planned Parenthood death camps to save the lives of babies scheduled for execution: would Mr. Cranley and crew defend us? Would they give us “sanctuary”? Probably not. They would condemn us as criminals for breaking the law. But what of the mayor? Does the mayor not have a special obligation to respect and maintain the law?