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Mayor Arturo Flores of Huntington Park, California had his own Sumter moment when he ordered police to confront ICE personnel taking illegal alien criminals into custody.

“This is not immigration enforcement. This is state-sanctioned intimidation,” Flores declared. “I am calling for the immediate cessation of these raids and for the Huntington Park Police Department to begin verifying the identities and authority of any individuals conducting such operations within city limits.”

According to an official statement, Flores is “urging law enforcement to investigate and intervene in any unauthorized operations that place public safety or civil liberties at risk.”

Considering that Huntington Park’s police department has only 86 full-time employees with only 58 law enforcement personnel and 28 civilians, a confrontation with federal law enforcement, especially one that can call on the National Guard and the United States Marine Corps for backup, and that much of the city government is already under federal investigation, that seems like a very poor idea, but it’s an idea that Los Angeles politicos are picking up.

After the 60s, Huntington Park went from a white area to a 96.6% Hispanic one. No one knows how much of Huntington’s population is illegal and Mayor Flores, Vice Mayor Eduardo “Eddie” Martinez, Councilmember Karina Macias, Council Member Jonathan Sanabria, City Manager Ricardo Reyes, City Clerk Eduardo Sarmiento and Police Chief Cosme Lozano seem to like it that way. Huntington Park made history by appointing illegal aliens to various commissions.

Statewide representatives like Senator Lena Gonzalez, Assemblymember Robert Rivas and Assemblywoman Sade Elhawary (a bisexual half-Arab, half-Latina community organizer), and Congressman Robert Garcia like it that way too.

And while the Latino names may stand out, what stands out more is the party. Ethnicity is just the intersection between criminality and the political power of the Dems.

The Los Angeles Times described Huntington Park as “scandal-plagued” after corruption investigations led to search warrants being executed at the home of former Mayor (and current councilwoman) Karina Macias, Huntington Park City Hall and multiple other locations as part of ‘Operation Dirty Pond’. But places like Huntington Park represent the power base of the party.

Democrat power in California rests on that mixture of cronyism, corruption and illegal aliens.

Indeed, California is a prime example of a state where political power is built around illegal aliens. Whether or not the illegals actually vote in any number matters less than whether they’re counted for ‘ghost’ districts filled with non-citizens. California’s millions of illegal aliens represent local, statewide and congressional seats that give the Democrats a total lock on power.

The state lost a congressional seat because its population only grew from 37.3 million to 39.5 million. How many congressional seats would California lose without its illegal alien population?

Subtract even the most liberal number of illegal aliens and California would lose 4 seats (in addition to the one it already lost) bringing its congressional delegation down to 48 seats. That would be bad news for efforts by the Democrats to retake the House, but it would also cut California’s power in the electoral college and would make it harder for the Dems to win presidential elections. That is why they’re willing to risk civil war for illegals.

Another way of looking at ‘sanctuary states’ and ‘cities’ is that they serve the purpose of ensuring that illegal aliens take part in local affairs to the maximum degree possible and that when a census taker shows up, they’re happy to answer questions and be counted. That, as both Democrats and Justice Roberts understood during Trump’s first term, is almost as important as actually going out there and voting. It’s why Democrats fight against not only Voter ID, but any restrictions on the participation of illegal aliens in any area of public life.

What would the Democrats look like without an illegal population somewhere in the 30 million range? (Estimates vary wildly of the actual number. And that’s part of the problem.)

The tens of millions of illegal aliens around the country inflate Democrat political power much as the number of slaves once did before the Civil War. If America’s illegals were to be deported, Democrats could lose as many as 15 electoral college votes and close elections would naturally trend toward Republicans. The political map would change. Democrats would cease to be competitive in national elections without fundamentally reorienting their message.

And that is why the Democrats are willing to risk civil war to fight for illegal aliens in California.

It’s not simple ideological fidelity. After Trump’s devastating ‘They/Them’ ad, Democrats and their media are building a case for dumping parts of the transgender movement. The New York Times and the Washington Post are heretically running articles arguing that ‘transing’ kids is a bad idea. Gov. Newsom agreed that having men in dresses competing against women is wrong and the University of Pennsylvania will be stripping Lia Thomas of his medals.

The Democrats are far from done with the transgender movement, but for the moment they’re willing to pull back to avoid looking like lunatics because the actual strategic benefit of the transgender movement is right up there with the electoral potential of Rhode Island.

Illegals are another matter. Even as drag queens were being kicked out of the DNC Fuhrerbunker, Democrats set off riots in Los Angeles and California politicians are working up confrontations with ICE. Democrat officials are looking for exciting new ways to compare immigration enforcement to the Holocaust, detention facilities to concentration camps and ICE personnel to the Nazis. This probably doesn’t play any better with the general public than Admiral Rachel Levine did, but detransitioning Democrats is easier than legalizing them.

The Democrats can abandon drag queens and men named Sue a lot faster than they can abandon places like Huntington Park, California. California can’t afford to lose its illegal aliens because the party that runs it can’t afford to lose political power there and around the nation.