The Trump administration is planning to halt immigration processing at airports in sanctuary cities.
There is a gate across this road. The modern man says, “I see no reason for it; let us remove it.” The wiser man says, “If you see no reason for it, I will not let you remove it. Go away and think. When you can tell me why it is here, I may let you destroy it.”
The gate in question is not made of wood or iron, but of jurisdiction. It is the complex, often messy, and occasionally contradictory arrangement by which local municipalities in the United States have historically exercised a degree of autonomy regarding the enforcement of federal immigration laws. The Trump administration, in its June proposal to halt immigration processing at airports in so-called sanctuary cities, intends to tear down this gate. The argument for its removal is straightforward: the federal government has the right to enforce its own laws, and local resistance is an obstruction to that right. It is a clean, logical line. It is also, I suspect, a line drawn in sand that ignores the shape of the land beneath it.
To understand why this fence was built, one must first understand that the United States is not a single mind, but a federation of many. The “sanctuary” designation is not merely a political slogan; it is the accumulated wisdom of local communities who have decided, for reasons of economics, compassion, or sheer practicality, that they do not wish to be the primary agents of federal deportation policy. This is not necessarily a rejection of the law, but a rejection of the method of its enforcement. The fence was built to keep the chaos of federal overreach from spilling into the orderly streets of local governance. It was built because the people who live in those cities know that if the federal government can dictate who may enter their airports, it can eventually dictate who may enter their schools, their churches, and their homes.
The reformers, in this case, are the federal administrators who view the nation as a machine to be tuned. They see the sanctuary cities as broken gears. They wish to replace the friction of local discretion with the smooth, cold efficiency of federal uniformity. But there is a danger in this efficiency. It is the danger of the man who sweeps the floor so vigorously that he sweeps away the rug, and then wonders why the floor is cold.
Consider the stakes. The proposal targets cities that have not cooperated with federal enforcement, affecting millions of tourists arriving for the FIFA event. This is a curious intersection of sport and statecraft. The world comes to watch a game, a universal language of joy and competition, only to find that the airport - a place of arrival and welcome - has become a checkpoint of political retribution. The ordinary tourist, who cares little for the partisan squabbles of Washington, finds himself caught in the crossfire. He is not a sanctuary city activist; he is a man with a suitcase and a ticket. Yet he is treated as a suspect because the city he visits has chosen to prioritize its own local order over federal command.
The paradox here is that the attempt to strengthen federal authority may actually weaken the very fabric of national unity. By punishing local autonomy, the federal government invites resentment rather than cooperation. It turns local officials into adversaries rather than partners. The fence was built to allow for this necessary tension, to allow for the democracy of the dead to speak through the living institutions of local government. To remove it is to assume that the federal government knows better than the local community what is good for that community. This is the hubris of the educated fool, who believes that because he can read the map, he knows the terrain.
the timing is suspect. To halt processing during a major international event is to signal that the United States is more interested in political scoring than in hospitality. It is to tell the world that our borders are not just lines on a map, but weapons in a domestic political war. This is not the face of a confident nation. It is the face of a nation at war with itself.
The ordinary person understands this. He knows that when the government tries to control everything, it ends up controlling nothing well. He knows that local communities have a right to define their own character, within the bounds of the law. He knows that the fence was not built to keep out justice, but to keep out tyranny. The reformers may believe they are clearing the road for progress, but they are merely removing the guardrails. And when the car goes off the road, it will not be the reformers who are blamed, but the ordinary people who trusted them to know where the cliff was.
Before we tear down the fence, we must ask: what is it keeping out? If it is keeping out chaos, then perhaps it should remain. If it is keeping out justice, then perhaps it should go. But to remove it without asking is to act not as a reformer, but as a vandal. And history has shown that vandals rarely build anything that lasts. The democracy of the dead votes against such haste. They built these institutions for a reason. It is not for the clever men of today to dismiss that reason with a wave of the hand. They must explain it. And if they cannot, they should leave the fence standing.