Rahm Emanuel’s Banning Trump from Chicago Highlights the Chicago Mayor’s Hypocrisy
President Donald Trump repealed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals decree, aka DACA. The long-winded name was better known as the Dreamers’ decree. The Obama administration introduced the decree in 2012 to protect the children of illegal immigrants (or those without papers), who were born in the United States. There are some 800,000 of these DACA children. In response, the mayor of Chicago and former Obama presidential campaign official, Rahm Emanuel, decided to turn his city into an anti-Trump “sanctuary” or a Trump-free zone, if you will.
Mayor Emanuel couldn’t have picked a more appropriate—dare I say, hypocritical, pretentious, and phony—pulpit from where to boast his announcement: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. (Source: “Rahm Emanuel Declares Chicago A ‘Trump-Free City’,” The Daily Wire, December 13, 2017.)
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So, even before we ponder the legalities of this declaration, let us consider some Chicago realities.
Chicago has some of the highest taxes in the United States. But, as high as those taxes are, the city is on the brink of bankruptcy and the quality of amenities provided falls short of the mark. The city remains in debt, to the tune of billions of dollars, and many essential services from schools to police are suffering. That’s even before we mention the crime rate. Crime is rising so fast that Trump compared Chicago to a Middle Eastern conflict zone. (Source: “House prices in Chicago suburbs fall as crime rate rises,” The Financial Times, December 13, 2017.)
Chicago Has Many Problems: Trump Walking Its Streets Isn’t One of Them
Meanwhile, residents must be finding the fact that property values are declining as fast as the crime rate is rising most “comforting,” no doubt. So, in this “lovely” context and from the pulpit of a comedy show pretending to be old Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. (only without the comedy and humor), Mayor Emanuel banned Trump from walking the streets of Chicago.
Granted, Trump has not had a great few weeks lately and he’s made many mistakes. But Rahm Emanuel is in no position to lecture. He has a monumental task ahead in trying to manage Chicago. How could he possibly even think of “banning” anyone, let alone the elected President of the United States, from walking the streets of one of America’s largest cities?
Similarly, Emanuel the hero told the DACA kids they can stay in Chicago. Well, that’s certainly lovely. But Chicago is still in Illinois, one of the states of the Union and, therefore, subject to the laws of that Union when it comes to matters of immigration. Emanuel cannot take Federal legal matters into his own hands. That’s a sweet sentiment for the man once dubbed as “Rahm-bo,” because even as a Democrat, he enthusiastically endorsed G.W. Bush’s war on Iraq.
So, Can the Mayor of Chicago Ban Trump from Chicago?
Now to the most ridiculous part of Rahm Emanuel’s declaration on Colbert’s…cough, cough …”show.” Does he—or anyone, in fact—have the legal authority to ban Trump from Chicago? The simple answer is a big fat No. Were Trump a citizen of Russia, he might have been banned from Moscow because, since the days of the Soviet Union, those who move to Moscow from other cities need a special permit.
As for the United States, no city has such bureaucratic restrictions. One reason is the market. Some cities are simply too expensive to live in, thus people don’t even move there unless they have a job that pays them enough.
The U.S. Constitution allows—in fact, it guarantees—total “freedom of movement” in the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
Thus, unless Trump has been found guilty of a crime for which the penalty is jail, he can choose to walk the streets of any American city, regardless of how many DACA Dreamers he expels from the United States. As for the fairness of the DACA decision, that is debatable and it requires careful thought. But certainly nobody, not even Rahm “Problem Solver” Emanuel, can prevent Trump from going out on the town in Chicago…and all that jazz.
