Harbor fee

Liliana is an Elvira wannabe. She’s an illegal alien who only goes by her first name. She also has the obligatory anchor baby with her. She’s holed up in the United Church of Christ in Simi Valley California after wearing out her welcome at a church in Long Beach. Her unlawful presence has sparked rallies and protests at the church.

Simi Valley Mayor Paul Miller has invoiced the church $39,306 for police protection. The city can’t make the feds charge the UCC for harboring a known illegal alien, but they can make a point about what it costs the city to protect the church.

Mayor Miller made it clear: “This city is not going to be known as a sanctuary city.”

How refreshing. I think I would fall over dead if Mayor Daley took that sort of initiative, or Mayor Schock for that matter.

Now, astute readers will try to draw a comparison to the Sheriff Beck-Holiday Inn problem a few weeks ago. Remember, the Holiday Inn canceled the venue because the police wanted $3,500 for enforcement services.

The difference is…holding a meeting is not illegal in America; harboring an illegal alien is.

But it is nice to know the ACLU does uphold the right to hold a meeting and the right to protest, at least in California. Maybe someone should tell them about Crystal Lake.

"Paying for the cost of a political demonstration like this is paying for protection of freedom of expression, which is the price of living in a democracy," ACLU attorney Peter Bibring said Wednesday. "If people had to pay, no one would ever demonstrate."

Here’s another comment from a Latino activist:
But the church didn't call the cops, said Hilda Delgado, a spokeswoman for the New Sanctuary Movement, the organization that helped Liliana hole up in the church. Nor did its members cause any more of a scene than the 100 people marching around outside the church's grounds.
She dismissed the bill as a political scare tactic and said it wouldn't shake the church's resolve.
"We did not organize this protest," she said. "We did not call the police. We did not ask them to send their officers. This is ridiculous."
(end of comment – courtesy of The LA Daily News)


I’ll bet the Sheriff Beck organizers thought the same thing.

Franklin, Jefferson, et al. must be smiling right now at the twists and turns of freedom of speech.

Oh, I almost forget…Mayor Miller is the former police chief.