Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) believes that the mayor of Denver could face serious consequences, including removal from office and potential prosecution, for trying to impede mass deportations under the incoming administration.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has made a strong commitment to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. He plans to utilize local law enforcement and 50,000 residents positioned at the county line to prevent federal authorities from carrying out the deportations. Mayor Johnston compares this act of defiance to a “Tiananmen Square moment.”
In a recent interview on Face The Nation, Paul expressed his concerns about Johnston’s plan, referring to it as a “form of insurrection.” He emphasized that such actions could potentially lead to Johnston being removed from office.
BRENNAN: The stated Trump plan is to use the military or military assets, deputize the National Guard, and have them act as immigration agents. Do you believe that is lawful?PAUL: You know, I’m 100% supportive of going after the 15,000 murderers, the 13,000 sexual assault perpetrators, rapist, all of these people. Let’s send them on their way to prison or back home to another prison. So I would say all points bulletin all in. But you don’t do it with the army because it’s illegal. And we’ve we’ve had a distrust of putting the army into our streets because the police have a difficult job. But the police understand the Fourth Amendment. They have to go to judges. They have to get warrants. It has to be specific. And so I’m for removing these people. But I would do it through the normal process of domestic policing.Now, I would say that the mayor of Denver, if he’s going to resist federal law, which there’s a long standing, standing history of the supremacy of federal law, he’s going to resist that. It will go all the way to the Supreme Court. And I would suspect that he would be removed from office. I don’t know whether or not that would be a criminal prosecution for someone resisting federal law. But he will lose. And people need to realize that what he is offering is a form of insurrection where the states resist the federal government. Most people objected to that and rejected that long ago. So I think the mayor of Denver is on the wrong side of history and really, I think will face legal ramifications if he doesn’t obey the federal law.