Will the desecration of the American flag at ICE facility turn the tide of the border battle?

The overwhelming majority of Americans, including most swing voters, want Republicans to simply enforce our immigration laws and prioritize the needs of Americans over the desires of illegal aliens. Why won’t they?

Republicans will likely miss the powerful symbolism of illegal alien protesters ripping down the American flag at an ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado, and raising the Mexican flag. For those of us who are veterans of the fight for sovereignty, this act conjured up memories of the 2006 fight over amnesty that conservatives successfully turned into a law to protect sovereignty, a law yet to be enforced by our government.

In 2006, the Left, along with Sen. John McCain and President George W. Bush, tried to repeat the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens already here. As always, the American people were dead set against it, but they just weren’t activated, because all of the political money and activism is on the other side. That all changed when illegal aliens started publicly attacking our flag, according to Michelle Malkin, who was the leading conservative voice fighting amnesty at the time.

“In the spring of 2006, the illegal alien amnesty mob finally pushed Americans over the edge,” said Malkin in an interview with CR.

“Ethnic grievance-mongers raised the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High School in southern California. The flag wars quickly spread to Florida, Texas, Arizona, and my now-adopted home state of Colorado. At the time, I wrote: ‘I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington.’ I was right. Thanks to these unbridled displays of anti-American hatred, citizens rose fiercely to the defense of our borders and our laws — and the Bush amnesty plan crashed in flames.”

Malkin noted that “P.R. strategists for the sovereignty saboteurs have tried to clean up their act and dress up their endless amnesty campaigns in red, white, and blue” ever since they made that blunder. “They temporarily put down their foreign flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts, and cloaked their radical Reconquista aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of ‘reform,’ ‘opportunity,’ and DREAMers. But they just can't help themselves. They can never hide their true colors — and the Mexican flag-raising in Aurora this past weekend proved it. Once again, I predict doom for the border-erasers. They've crossed a line that Americans have not, cannot, and will not tolerate.”

What did conservatives get for their efforts in 2006? A mandate for at least 850 miles of double-layer fencing and a requirement that DHS achieve full operational control to prevent all illegal immigration and cartel activity at any land or maritime border within 18 months of passage. It’s just that the law was never implemented.

Moreover, President Bush actually started enforcing interior immigration laws and deporting illegal aliens with 287(g) and the Secure Communities program, where deportations were ramped up, an effort that bore fruit even well into the first term of Obama’s precedency, when we were averaging over 400,000 deportations a year. MS-13 was almost eradicated from the country as a result of this successful push by we the people.

The lesson of the flag is that America can survive a conventional invasion that is eventually repelled. At the “dawn’s early light” of September 14, 1814, despite a 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, by the British navy, “our flag was still there.” There was no Union Jack flying over the fort, despite the superior British firepower. But when our government subverts our sovereignty laws and brings in millions of illegal aliens who then become the most powerful constituency in the country – with the ability to single-handedly command the legislative agenda of the House of Representatives for the month of July – our flag was easily removed from an ICE detention facility and the Mexican flag was raised for several hours.

An invading army is not counted in the census. An invading army does not steal birthright citizenship for their children. An invading army doesn’t sue us in court and change our language, at least not right away.

In that sense, those who recoil when we refer to the border situation as “an invasion” are correct. This is worse than an invasion. It is subtler, yet more enduring and transformational in the long run.

This very point, missed by the political elites, including many so-called conservative political elites, is understood even by many run-of-the-mill Democrat voters. According to a Harvard-Harris poll, by a margin of 2-1, independent and moderate voters want illegal aliens, even those with questionable asylum claims, “immediately turned back” at the border. That view is held even by 44 percent of self-described Hillary Clinton voters.

While Democrats are holding one hearing after another on how they can shield and encourage more illegal immigration at the border, Republicans are missing in action, not holding hearings in the Senate on all the harms illegal aliens are causing Americans. Most Republicans are clamoring to show that they care more about the treatment of the invaders than the constituents they represent because they think the Twitter bubble is representative of American voters’ sentiments on the issue. They are simply wrong.

According to Axios, a recent focus group of 12 swing voters in the swing state of Michigan demonstrated this point. “Immigration came up many times when these swing voters were asked to discuss their top issue heading into the presidential election,” reports Axios. “Their responses sounded a lot like the ‘America First’ message President Trump has been championing.”

This focus group was composed of the quintessential swing voters – people who voted for both Romney (2012) and Hillary (2016) or both Obama (2012) and Trump (2016). What did they find? “Eight of these participants, including one Romney-Clinton voter, agreed with this statement: "When we give migrants food, clothing, toiletries, and shelter, all we’re doing is encouraging more of them to come to the U.S., and we don’t want that."

In other words, most moderate voters are to the right of even the messaging of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.

Among conservative elites in D.C., going after unqualified birthright citizenship for people who break into the country is considered a no-fly zone. For the average American, on the other hand, it is a no-brainer. “We shouldn’t give away our birthright like candy," said Shawn M. "Meaning that all they have to do is cross the border illegally, pop out a kid, and they’re a U.S. citizen. Two illegals do not a citizen make," she added.

Indeed, the American people stood defiant against a naval attack by a superpower 200 years ago. They stood for the flag. They certainly won’t be cowed by an invasion of illegal immigration and social transformation without representation. The only question is whether the elites of the bipartisan oligarch in Washington will catch up to the mainstream of American thought.

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