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A Letter to Gavin Newsome on Immigration

21 Sept 2025

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Your Honor, politics is perception, and the perception of an Independent is that Democrats under Biden lured millions of immigrants here under a false promise of "sanctuary," in direct violation of federal law. And now the Republicans are rounding these poor people up with blatant violations of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.  The damage is done, the immigrants are here, and they have Constitutional rights which are being violated.  Democracy requires compromise, Your Honor, and it is never painless. Changes need to come from both parties.

 

First, Republicans must end the bullying tactics, abandon the quotas, and respect the 14th Amendment rights of all “persons” within our jurisdiction.

A quota is not a policy, Your Honor, it is a performance. A quota of 3,000 deportations per day suggests that President Trump intends to remove 4 million illegal immigrants during his administration. By September of 2025, the actual pace was about 600 per day, and at that pace fewer than 1 million will be deported after four years. The strategy is failing by its own measure.

And the damage extends beyond the immigrants. Workers in Las Vegas report their tip income cut in half for lack of customers. Bed and breakfasts in New England report losses of 30 percent or more, from businesses that operate on far thinner margins than that. Another season like 2025, and they could go under. The arrest and deportation of Korean workers in Florida has strained our relations with South Korea and endangers our goal of dominance in the tech industry.  What the Republicans are doing is not only a failed strategy, Your Honor, it is a source of serious economic and geopolitical harm.

 

Second, Democrats must accept that immigrants with criminal records or ties to criminal organizations should be deported.  All others should be granted green cards and a fast-track path to citizenship.  

The President promised that ICE would pursue criminals and gang members. Instead, ICE is arresting immigrants at work, or while looking for work. Criminals do not work, Your Honor, which is why they are criminals, and searching a farmer’s field for gang members is ludicrous. Criminals within our borders are the responsibility of law enforcement, not immigration. The Democrats must therefore step up their law enforcement efforts, not defund them.

The President also wants to bring manufacturing back to America, but America does not have the workforce. If ICE is going to detain illegal workers and leave the criminals to the police, let it be with the goal of green cards and a path to citizenship, not imprisonment and deportation. That will enlarge the labor force and buy time to educate American citizens in the operation of automated factories.  Democrats need to facilitate this.

 

Third, Democrats must abandon, once and for all, the idea of voting without ID or proof of citizenship.  Only citizens should vote in an American election: ID REQUIRED. If minority citizens lack ID, then get them one. That is a bureaucratic problem, Your Honor, not a civil rights issue.

According to Pew Research, the illegal immigrant population grew from 10 million to 14 million under President Biden. Add the Democrats’ desire to allow voting without ID or proof of citizenship, and their motives become clear. From an Independent’s perspective, the Democrats tried to “stack the deck” with immigrants at election time, and now the Republicans are trying to take the deck away. Immigrants have become cannon fodder in a war between two parties.  Instead of spending your resources to win immigrants the vote, put them into a path to citizenship, and the vote will follow. And the day they receive green cards, they begin paying taxes and turn from liabilities into assets.

 

Fourth, the “sanctuary city” policies must end.  Democrats must assist, not resist, ICE in locating those who are in this country illegally. Only then will local law enforcement be positioned to guarantee the rights of immigrants and to hold any ICE agent accountable for Constitutional violations. Otherwise, Your Honor, the Democrats are standing on the sidelines watching these poor people be violated after promising them sanctuary. And a law forbidding ICE agents to wear masks only places those immigrants squarely between the Democrats and the Republicans in the Democrats’ bid for the White House.

 

In conclusion,

The Republicans must give up mass deportations, and the Democrats must step up their law enforcement against the criminal element.

The Republicans must allow green cards and a path to citizenship for those here illegally who want to work, and the Democrats must end “sanctuary city” policies and give up their desire to give non-citizens the vote.

Most important, cooperation between federal immigration and local law enforcement will protect the innocent, deliver the Republican promise to remove criminals and gangs, and fulfill the Democratic promise of sanctuary to those who came here only for a better life.

Politics is perception, Your Honor, and Democracy requires compromise, not obstinacy. If you wish to be President, Mr. Newsom, please stop fighting and find a compromise. It is the only way to protect these immigrants and save America.