Trump-Nominated Judges Are Foiling Leftist Activist

 

By Joe diGenova
WesternJournal.com

President Donald Trump arrives for a "Keep America Great" campaign rally at the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio, on Jan. 9, 2020. (Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

The campaign to undemocratically impose an open-borders agenda through the courts just ran into another dead end.

In December, activists dedicated to keeping our southern border open to waves of illegal migration celebrated as a Bill Clinton-appointed federal judge in El Paso, Texas, granted their request to impose yet another delay on President Trump’s effort to build the wall.

The injunction held up $3.6 billion that had already been allocated for border wall construction, threatening to overturn one of the signature policies that the American people voted for in 2016.

On Jan. 8, however, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit restored the funding. Construction of the wall is back on, and this time it was President Trump and his subordinates celebrating.

“And we’re back in business! (For this 1/3 of the money. The other 2/3 had been unaffected),” tweeted Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, the man President Trump brought on board to spearhead the drive for the wall.

This is all a continuation of trends and patterns that began the moment Donald Trump won his historic victory by campaigning on an unapologetically anti-illegal-immigration platform.

Lawyers, activists and politicians on the left vowed “resistance” by any means necessary, and they’ve given it their best. Every major administration initiative on immigration and border security has been met by myriad legal challenges from one or more of a dozen well-funded open borders groups.

President Trump’s ban on travel from countries such as Iran that are major exporters of terrorism bounced back and forth between the Supreme Court and the lower courts for more than a year before finally being upheld.

Activists tried — and failed — to quash the successful “remain in Mexico” policy that stopped the dangerous “caravans” of Central American migrants. The same groups fought to keep family separation policies in place to keep the Trump administration from holding apprehended illegal immigrant families together while they await deportation hearings — proving that their real objectives are political, not humanitarian.

Nothing, however, has drawn as much “#resistance” ire as the wall — an overarching symbol of the American people’s resolve to reclaim sovereignty at our borders. Despite the open-borders movement’s best efforts over the past three years, the wall is being built, with 450 miles of barriers slated for completion by year’s end.

The defeat the Fifth Circuit handed the wall’s opponents — coming on the heels of a similar Trump administration victory at the Supreme Court — is indicative of another, more encouraging trend: The resistance-in-the-courts strategy is running out of steam.

As Attorney General William Barr argued in September, it’s long past time to end the undemocratic practice of nationwide injunctions, which undermine the people’s confidence in the integrity and impartiality of our judicial system.

Three years of historic judicial confirmations are making “#resistance” unviable. Since President Trump took office, the Senate has confirmed 187 judges to federal courts and 50 judges to the circuit courts — one-fourth of all such judges — and two originalist Supreme Court justices.

The days when activists could simply shop for a sympathetic court and use it to dictate federal immigration policy for months or years are drawing to a close.

Only five of the 13 appellate courts remain in control of Democrat-nominated judges. Three — the Second, Third and Eleventh Circuits — have flipped to Republican-nominated majorities under President Trump. At this rate, even the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit is in danger of flipping to GOP control during President Trump’s second term.

The opportunities for holding up the entire country’s border security by exploiting a few well-placed liberal judges are running out. The open-borders radicals in the Democratic Party have hit a dead end, but their ability to circumvent the will of the people won’t come to a permanent end until President Trump secures re-election.

Joseph diGenova was US Attorney for the District of Columbia and an Independent Counsel. He is the founding partner of diGenova & Toensing, LLP.