Va GOP Primary: Freitas Tells Voters He Will Ignore Federal Immigration Laws
RICHMOND, Va. — A two-term state lawmaker running for U.S. Senate in Virginia is already planning to violate his federal Oath of Office before his hand even touches the King James, pledging to totally ignore federal immigration law on the matter of sanctuary cities, according to reports.
For Culpeper state Del. Nick Freitas, the rule of law is a matter of his whim, Saturday’s Virginia Tea Party debate revealed. The would-be Senator with an apparent allergy to making and enforcing laws, said he absolutely would not prosecute municipal authorities who create sanctuary cities, shocking many tea partiers at the March 17 VATP debate.
“If we ever, God forbid, had a Hillary Clinton presidency, and they passed federal gun bans, when a sheriff … refuses to enforce it, the federal government is going to go in and put that person in jail,” warned Freitas.
Freitas is only one of two candidates running for U.S. Senate in Virginia’s 2018 Republican primary who agreed to speak at VATP. Elections are held June 12 in Virginia.
For many large cities all across the U.S., passive non-enforcement of federal immigration laws is an unofficial, official practice. The state delegate wants to go a step further, suggesting that not enforcing U.S. immigration laws should be formalized. As his remarks suggest, Freitas conflates hypothetical future abuse of the Second Amendment by a hypothetical future president with a delegated federal power written into Art. 1 of the U.S. Constitution — apples and oranges, some might say. Congress is supposed to be in charge of immigration, since it was delegated as an original enumerated power, but any “infringement” of the Second Amendment would by it’s very nature be a grossly illegal, illegitimate change to the Constitution.
Whether or not Freitas’ example is a good one, what he told voters that night is plainly evident: a candidate for membership in the “world’s greatest deliberative body” wishes to abdicate the chamber’s authority before he even wins election.
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In stark contrast to Freitas, former Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Cory Stewart admonished attendees, “Prosecute any local or state official who declares themselves a sanctuary city.” Stewart did just that in Prince William County, and he didn’t forget to mention it to audience members, bragging about the 8,000 people he sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
“The only way we’re going to control the problems in this country is to stop this massive inflow of … all the aliens into this country who are suppressing wages who are committing crimes and that is why we must build,” Stewart stated, mirroring one of the signature campaign issues for now-President Trump.
For many establishment Republicans, Stewart is a persistent source of accountability and inconvenient transparency, when he isn’t vocally advocating for protecting Virginia’s historical statues.
Institutionalized anarchy where it concerns immigration is the takeaway for many participants of the traditional March 17 confab, something that ordinarily hurts a Republican candidate; but apparently — not in Richmond, Virginia.
If the straw poll taken that night at the Virginia Tea Party is accurate, Freitas is leading at 65 percent against 35 percent for Stewart, according to Tea Party chairman Rick Buchanan. Those numbers invert in scientific polls performed by the respected Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.
The race for U.S. Senate in Virginia is dominated almost entirely by discussions of candidate support for (or opposition to) Trump’s “great, big wall.”
Both Freitas and Stewart claim to be on the right side of the wall, but only one candidate truly wanted to “Build the Wall” before Saturday’s debate, and without taking a proverbial dip in the Rio Grande.
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