Trump’s Border Czar Threatens Denver with Jail Mayor Over Immigration Resistance (Revised)

On 26 Novem­ber 2024, The New Repub­lic report­ed that Tom Homan, Pres­i­dent-elect Trump’s choice for bor­der czar, threat­ened legal action against Den­ver May­or Mike John­ston over poten­tial resis­tance to fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. The arti­cle begins:

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s pick for “bor­der czar,” Tom Homan, has threat­ened to jail Den­ver’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic May­or Mike John­ston should he obstruct Trump’s immi­gra­tion agen­da. Dur­ing a Mon­day night inter­view on Han­ni­ty, Homan cit­ed a fed­er­al stat­ue that pro­hibits “bring­ing in and har­bor­ing cer­tain aliens.” “Me and the Den­ver may­or, we agree on one thing: He’s will­ing to go to jail. I’m will­ing to put him in jail,” Homan said…

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Key Points:

1. The con­flict arose after John­ston dis­cussed poten­tial civ­il resis­tance to fed­er­al immi­gra­tion oper­a­tions, com­par­ing it to the “Tianan­men Square moment.”
2. John­ston lat­er soft­ened his rhetoric but main­tained a will­ing­ness to engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence against “ille­gal or immoral” enforce­ment actions.
3. Homan threat­ened to cut fed­er­al fund­ing to sanc­tu­ary states and enforce fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws despite local opposition.
4. The exchange high­lights grow­ing ten­sions between fed­er­al and local author­i­ties over immi­gra­tion enforce­ment policies.

(GIOR note: This post replaces an ear­li­er one on the same sub­ject. It demon­strates how Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive rhetoric, as exem­pli­fied by Homan in the past, has fueled ten­sions between fed­er­al and local author­i­ties. This case illus­trates how such divi­sive lan­guage can esca­late pol­i­cy dis­agree­ments into poten­tial civ­il strife, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant threat to demo­c­ra­t­ic norms.)