Republican Tennessee General Assembly member Glen Casada raced to the bottom of an already crowded anti-refugee field Tuesday, endorsing a policy of “politely” using the National Guard to round up Syrian refugees and expel them from the state. The Tennessean reports:
"We need to activate the Tennessee National Guard and stop them from coming in to the state by whatever means we can," said House GOP Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin, referencing refugees.
"I’m not worried about what a bureaucrat in D.C. or an unelected judge thinks. ... We need to gather (Syrian refugees) up and politely take them back to the ICE center and say, 'They’re not coming to Tennessee, they’re yours.' "
[...]
Casada was asked to elaborate on his proposal, and whether Tennessee had the authority to detain refugees.
"Tennessee is a sovereign state. If the federal government is forsaking the obligation to protect our citizens, we need to act," Casada said during a phone interview with The Tennessean on Tuesday.
After more than half of the country’s governors made (unconstitutional) promises to wield state powers (that they don’t have, according to the Constitution) to stop Syrian refugees from entering state borders (by unknown means), Casada decided to up the ante and go full-on totalitarian. While most prominent GOP lawmakers seem to be using the Paris attacks and anti-refugee sentiment as rhetorical posturing, Casada presents a plan that is both terrifying and ridiculous in equal measure.
First of all, there’s no state authority, regardless of Casada’s reading of the law. Second, “politely” taking refugees back to immigration centers is about as realistic as the likelihood of fake Christian terrorists entering the country via those centers. What Casada means is rounding up immigrants at gunpoint—a policy that will almost certainly lead to deaths—and sending them to camps where they will either languish indefinitely, or be sent back to a war zone. He and all GOP blowhards should own up to the full horror of what they imply.
We don’t have to get caught up in hypothetical conversations about time-traveling to kill mass-murdering babies when the precursors to the same demagoguery exist right here.