DV Journal

From fentanyl deaths to public health funding to high-profile criminals like Danelo Cavalcante—an illegal immigrant and convicted murderer who escaped from Chester County Prison and evaded a 500-officer manhunt for two weeks last September—Pennsylvanians are paying the price locally for America’s border chaos. Now, House Republicans want the state legislature to take action, starting with a ban on sanctuary cities in the Keystone State.

“According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 13 counties in Pennsylvania consider themselves sanctuaries. And four municipalities have been labeled ‘welcoming cities,’” House GOP Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) said at a press conference Wednesday.

“Make no mistake, every time you create a sanctuary city or county, you’re literally moving the national border to your own neighborhood.”

The scope of the illegal immigration problem isn’t in dispute. Customs and Border Protection reported a record 3.2 million “enforcement actions” in fiscal year 2023—five times higher than when President Joe Biden took office. And the CBP reported last week that apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry had exceeded one million in just the first six months of the fiscal year 2024. That doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands entering the U.S. through ports of entry via questionable asylum claims or Biden’s parole system that flies immigrants from Central America directly to American cities.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia) touted her legislation requiring a minimum $1 million bail for anyone charged with assaulting a Pennsylvania police officer. She said it was a response to recent cases of illegal immigrants attacking cops and then being released.

White specifically referenced an incident in New York City where a group of illegal immigrants “viciously attacked two NYPD officers, punching and kicking them.”

“After arrests were made, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg released several of the suspects without bail, leaving them free to roam the streets to commit more crimes and simply disappear before the next court date,” said White.  “Upon his release, one of the suspects infamously raised his middle fingers at media cameras as he left the courtroom. Make no mistake, that gesture wasn’t just pointed toward the camera. It was pointed toward our police, our laws, and every law-abiding citizen.

“Our police officers deserve to know that their lawmakers here in Harrisburg and their communities back home have their backs,” added White.

Rep. Mike Cabell (R-Luzerne) is sponsoring a resolution to ask Congress and federal agencies to monitor “ghost flights” more closely. Those flights, some of which have landed in Pennsylvania, drop off “large numbers of undocumented immigrants,” said Cabell.

“These ghost flights are untracked and unmonitored. They circumvent and abuse immigration law, undermining the hard work and dedication of immigrants who enter the country legally,” said Cabell.

Rep. Donna Scheuren (R-Montgomery) introduced the Homeowner Protection and Squatter Eviction Act to protect homeowners by toughening squatter penalties. The bill allows homeowners to sign an affidavit allowing police to remove squatters immediately and increases the penalty to a felony for squatters who do more than $1,000 damage. It also requires police to notify ICE if the squatter is here illegally.

Scheuren mentioned several cases, including one from Philadelphia, where a resident had to pay squatters $1,200 to vacate a home he had put up for sale after police said they could not do anything to remove them because of “squatters’ rights.” He also had to pay $600 to clean up their mess.

She quoted U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who said, “This is crazy. Squatters should have no rights whatsoever. How can our colleagues pretend this is anything other than breaking the law?”

The issue of sanctuary cities is at the center of the House GOP’s efforts.

“Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have declared themselves sanctuary cities that will not cooperate with federal immigration officials when they find someone in their cities in this country illegally,” said Cutler. And “recently Lancaster city voted to end its cooperation with the U.S. Customs Enforcement.”

Rep. Ryan Warner (R-Fayette) complained Democrats had his bill to prevent municipalities from becoming illegal immigration sanctuaries stuck in committee.

Some Pennsylvania Democrats have complained Republicans are simply using the immigration issue for political purposes and that it doesn’t have a direct impact on the lives of ordinary Americans.

Warner pointed to the example of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia college student whom an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant allegedly murdered while she was out running on campus.

“If you ask the parents of Laken Riley, I guarantee they’ll tell you (it’s) an issue of personal safety,” Warner said.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

Chaos abounds at the border that is spilling over onto the streets of sanctuary cities and college campuses. Tragedies are playing out daily in America stemming from President Biden’s failure as a strategic manager.

Peter Drucker said strategic management requires “analytical thinking” and a “commitment of resources” to resolve issues. Both are sorely missing from border management.

First, the issue was never properly framed, so the public understood the rationale for open borders. This mean a strategy to achieve an outcome could not be created because goals were not in place.

President George H.W. Bush set a clear goal of removing the Iraqi army from Kuwait. And once it was achieved, for a variety of reasons, including his commitment to the coalition, hostilities ended. The goal was not to destroy the army of Saddam Hussein but rather to remove it as an occupying force.

So, let us speculate about President Biden’s goal. Was it people living in poverty? The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index puts the number of people living in poverty at 1.1 billion.

Perhaps the issue is human rights? Reuters reports, “more than a third of the world’s population, or 2.6 billion people, live in nations and territories gripped by repression, corruption and human rights abuses.”

Was it about climate refugees? According to the United Nations, 110 million people in 2023 were considered “displaced people” for a variety of reasons, including climate, war and natural disasters.

Failure to properly frame the problem means we lack a clear pathway toward achieving success.

The second strategic management mistake is Biden’s failure to fully assess resources, assuming instead that our social safety net is sufficient to meet the challenges posed by mass migration. Arguably, the social safety net was not working that well before the migrant influx, and the president would have known this by performing a simple stress test.

The president would have found that the performance of urban public schools is appallingly low and that the trend of teaching English as a second language is not sustainable when you are drawing migrants from 150 nations. He would have discovered in New York City, there existed a lack of affordable housing, leading to 150,000 New Yorkers living in the shelter system. He would have concluded that the influx of migrants would only exacerbate a growing problem.

He would have uncovered that emergency Medicaid for migrants has the potential to overwhelm the healthcare system and that diseases would likely be reintroduced into America because of the lack of vaccinations in many feeder nations. An assessment of our legal system would have uncovered police forces are underfunded and our justice system defanged. Neither can deal with the number of bad actors coming from all over.

It is essential in strategic management to ensure that your first move is the right move to gain support and continue building momentum behind your goals. The first move for migrants was to expand their dependency on government services. It is estimated by Homeland Security that the migrant crisis could cost Americans $451 billion annually. The total annual expenditure cannot be estimated going forward without a clear border strategy.

Finally, when managing an issue strategically, at the beginning, you have asked and answered what success will look like after that crisis has abated. The Senate bill signaled that we cannot stop illegal migration into America. The lack of strategy has led to a fluid approach focused on problem management. This is antithetical to strategic management, which demands leaders anticipate problems and prepare to meet the challenges they create.

It is time for us to begin to hold our elected leaders to a higher standard as strategic managers and stop relying on spending, which is not linked to a clear executable strategy, to solve every issue.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal