America is under siege at the border, and conservative legal voices are finally cutting through the spin to tell the truth — we don’t want criminals in this country. Advancing American Freedom senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky spelled that out plainly during his appearance on Life, Liberty & Levin, reminding viewers that law and order must come before open-door politics.
Von Spakovsky made the crucial legal point that due process for illegal migrants is very limited, and that immigration proceedings are civil, not criminal, which changes the legal protections available. Courts have repeatedly distinguished immigration matters from criminal trials, and that distinction matters for how we enforce the law and protect citizens.
What we are seeing from the left is a political campaign to undermine enforcement and create de facto amnesty by clogging the system with litigation and sympathetic narratives. Conservative legal experts have warned that courts too often grant deportable migrants extra leeway, allowing loopholes that incentivize more illegal crossings rather than deter them.
The debate about birthright citizenship is part of the same fight over whether the American people and the Constitution mean what they say. Von Spakovsky and other conservative scholars stress that the 14th Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” was never intended to grant automatic citizenship to children of those here unlawfully, a historical point Democrats refuse to confront.
This isn’t abstract: communities and families pay the real price when policy and courts prioritize permissiveness over public safety. Conservatives on the air have repeatedly pointed to tragic incidents and rising dangers tied to lax enforcement as proof that open-borders rhetoric has consequences for everyday Americans.
Washington and activist judges cannot continue to treat immigration as a political exercise while hardworking citizens shoulder the burden. It is time for lawmakers to act decisively: secure the border, clarify the law, and stop letting sympathetic narratives substitute for sober legal standards.
Patriots know what must be done — enforce the law, protect communities, and honor the rule of law that built this country. Every American who loves liberty should stand behind officials who put citizens first and demand that courts stop creating policy from the bench.
