[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 21, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1731-H1732]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        THE SANCTUARY MOVEMENT AND THE DOCTRINE OF NULLIFICATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  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

[[Page H1732]]

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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