The Sacred and the Profitable

Ever so slowly Episcopal services are returning to normal. Today we ditched the prerecorded music and sung the hymns, psalms, Gloria, and Sanctus, slightly muffled through our masks.

The congregation still was required to:

Pass a "touchless" peace by waving at each other;

Partake of the communion bread but not the chalice;

Retain a minimum six-foot distance in the pews, except for family members.

In the homily the priest mused about concepts of "church" that were the subject of today's lessons in 2 Samuel (that's "second Samuel," Donald) and Ephesians. The church consists of its people, but it is also true that physical places of worship have meaning for most Christians, who will make great sacrifices to build them.

Sacrifice, sanctuary, and sanctified all derive from the same Latin root sanctus ("holy"). Churches are not mere buildings but holy places, sacrosanct.

Grimbergen Abbey (WSJ photo)

When financial requirements become onerous, one can't be too sanctimonious . In Belgium a 900-year-old abbey is brewing beer:

Grimbergen Abbey on Thursday relaunched a brewery inside its walls for the first time in more than 200 years. The resurrection has furnished its sponsor, Carlsberg, with its own kind of holy grail: unique and authentic brews...

The priests, who rise to pray at 7 a.m. and then breakfast in silence, have blessed the brewery. They have final say over the beers, Carlsberg executives say. In their white habits, the priests stand out as they glide through the glitzy bar and brewery with its modern equipment.

The royalties from Carlsberg help pay for the upkeep of the abbey’s buildings and the priests’ pastoral and charitable work, says Father Karel.

That's the spirit.

Countervailing Narratives

Narratives about illegal immigration were initially the exclusive province of open-border, sanctuary-city advocates. Tales were rife about "dreamers" who served in the Armed Forces or were valedictorians, doctors, teachers, and other contributing members to American society.

(Toronto Sun image)

The 2015 shooting death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by illegal immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was the flashpoint for the counter-narrative that non-enforcement of immigration laws posed physical danger to citizens. Donald Trump referred to Kate Steinle during the 2016 campaign and called Jose Zarate's acquittal in 2017 an "outrage."

Immigration reform has been paralyzed by the competing narratives (and political polarization, but that's way beyond the scope of this post).

In 2018 New York enacted a Criminal Justice Reform Package that "eliminate[d] monetary bail for people facing misdemeanor and non-violent felony charges." Bail reform got most of the ink, but another part of the legislation, Expanding the Discovery Process, may have resulted in disaster for a witness who was going to testify against MS-13: [bold added]

Wilmer Rodriguez (Daily Mail)

Mr. Rodriguez agreed to testify against the gang members, who were charged with assault and witness intimidation as a result of the attack, officials said.

On Sunday, Mr. Rodriguez was found beaten to death outside a home in New Cassel, N.Y.....it came several weeks after a judge ordered prosecutors to disclose Mr. Rodriguez’s identity to lawyers who represented the gang members accused of attacking him, officials said.

Reformers say that defendants should be given witness names weeks in advance. Detractors counter that violent defendants will stop at nothing to prevent these witnesses from testifying. Reformers are denying any responsibility for Mr. Rodriquez' murder:

“This has absolutely nothing to do with the new criminal justice reforms,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the State Senate’s Democratic majority....

Lisa Schreibersdorf, the executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, said...“There is absolutely no way this is related to the discovery laws.”

There is no proof that Wilmer Rodriguez had been killed by MS-13, yet the gang's history of murder and other violence makes the supposition plausible. Unless the suspicion is countered soon, the narrative connection between the 2018 Reform Bill and the Rodriguez murder will be unshakeable.

Getting in the Way

Time personalizes the cost of America's immigration crackdown through its cover story. It's not an extremely partisan piece, but by telling the stories of families who are broken up--especially kids who are left behind--the reader can't help but feel sympathy for them.

The undocumented communities live in fear ("an explosion of fear"--I didn't say the article had no bias):

Don’t go to the Walmart, an ICE truck was seen parked nearby. Plainclothes agents are watching the park. In a phone interview from Mexico, Alejandro told me that many of his old friends now avoid leaving the house, limiting necessary errands to blitzes after dark, when agents are thought to be less active. Sitting in a folding chair on the patio outside her home, Maria describes a similar drumbeat of distress. She doesn’t use the word miedo, fear, but a more visceral term: pavor. Dread.

Advocates for the undocumented, IMHO, can lessen the dread by brokering a deal with the Trump Administration. By encouraging local authorities to cooperate with ICE and hand over undocumented criminals from local jails, ICE would agree to greatly reduce its community raids. (Of course, this would mean gutting the notion of sanctuary cities and states.) But if that hypothetical deal succeeds, we can talk about building a wall and formalizing a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

The outlines for a deal or deals are there, but I suppose people are letting their anger and moral superiority (not obvious to this blogger, by the way) get in the way.

Two Lives Intersect, One Dies, Millions Affected

Jose Inez Garcia Zarate

Nearly two-and-a-half years after Kate Steinle was shot by a five-times-deported illegal immigrant, a San Francisco jury finds her killer innocent of murder:

[Jose Inez] Garcia Zarate was charged from the beginning with murder, and prosecutors gave the jury the option of convicting him of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter. Jurors rejected all three.

He was convicted of being a "felon in possession of a gun", which carries a sentence of up to three years. He will get credit for the more than two years he has already been held in jail.

Kate Steinle

Ever since her death in 2015, the Steinle case has been cited as the consequences of lax enforcement of immigration law. If anything, the verdict will inflame passions on both sides, leading to resumption of Trump Administration efforts to build a wall on the southern border, as well as pushback against the Sanctuary City/State movement:[bold added]

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors amended the city’s sanctuary policies after the shooting. But if a person with Garcia Zarate’s record before the Pier 14 shooting were in San Francisco jail today, and eligible for release, he would still be freed rather than turned over to immigration agents in the absence of a federal warrant.

The right to a jury trial is enshrined in the Constitution; sometimes the result is hugely unpopular, but that's the price for keeping one of the fundamental rights that protect everyone.

Golden Sanctuary State: Information is a Two-Way Street

Est. 2.7 million undocumented in CA (Image from KVPR)   

California is officially a sanctuary state: [bold added]

The law bars law enforcement officers in the state from asking about a person’s immigration status or participating in any joint task force with federal officials for the purpose of enforcing immigration laws.

The new law makes changes to the state’s Trust Act by barring local jails from holding an inmate for immigration authorities if that person is cleared for release on their state criminal cases. The law also limits the list of offenses that make undocumented immigrants subject to having their impending release passed along to federal authorities.

One counter-move by the Federal Government, namely, withholding payments to California, has been much discussed and will be challenged in court if attempted. But money isn't the only weapon.

The information flow from the U.S. Government to the States is massive. California benefits from economic (e.g., interest rates, tax audits, census), scientific (e.g., weather, USGS), transportation (e.g., aviation, shipping), and other data, often delivered in real time, the lack of which would severely hamper the functioning of State government.

For example, the State piggy-backs on IRS audits of individuals; a balance due to the U.S. Treasury is followed up by an invoice from the Franchise Tax Board a month or two later. If the Treasury withheld audit results, California could not staff up independently to review the taxes of its residents and lose millions of dollars each year.

As it shuts off communication to the Federal Government, our State should remember that information is a two-way street.

To Your Liking

(Graphic from Florida politics)

The controversy over sanctuary cities has each side arguing the moral superiority of its own position. One result is certain: the conflict between Federal and Local law enforcement has left the bad guys opportunities to exploit.

For example, if I were engaged in street sales of illegal drugs in San Francisco, I would have as many undocumented immigrants as possible working for me. If they were arrested, San Francisco police, following Administrative Code Section 12I.3. Restrictions on Law Enforcement Officials, will detain suspects for ICE only if they have committed violent felonies. Because of the explicitly declared policy of non-cooperation, SF police are especially motivated to release non-violent offenders as quickly as possible. My runners would be freed post-haste.

Legal residents or even citizens can also find this policy to their liking. If a bad-guy-citizen were accused of, say, breaking and entering, he could affect his most fractured, accented English and have a friend inform ICE that he was in county lockup. (Of course, it helps to have the right surname.) Either his act will be convincing to the locals who will release him before ICE arrives, or Immigration will take him away, whereupon he will produce the proper papers and again be released.

Hey, bad guys, come to San Francisco, Los Angeles, or maybe anywhere in the State of California . Whether or not you have papers, you will find our state to your liking.