Why the Colorado Wall Idea Isn’t So Funny

My friends and family got a chuckle out of President Trump’s “border wall in Colorado” comment. I found it foreboding.

We have had versions of state borders, many for biased or racist reasons.

Start with our Constitution: It had a section that required states to return “fugitive” slaves to the state where they escaped. 
That was a legal border to contain slaves in their home states.

Then we had California’s Depressions-era law to keep out Okies (dubbed the Anti-Okie Law). 
“Okie” is a derogatory term that roughly equates to the N-word. These people were often offspring of whites and Native Americans. They had darker complexions. Even white Okies had dark skin after living through the Dust Bowl era and having dirt deeply embedded in their skin.

California enacted a criminal law to bring in “any indigent person who is not a resident of the State, knowing him to be an indigent person.” In Edwards v. California, a Californian drove to Texas and returned with his unemployed brother-in-law. He was tried, convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence. On appeal, the Supreme Court unanimously vacated the verdict and declared the law unconstitutional, as violating Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

Just this week, the Supreme Court looked at a state-border type law. Kansas has a law that criminalizes the fraudulent use of a Social Security card. They arrested and convicted several immigrant restaurant workers under the law. 
The question is whether a state can impose a criminal sanction for fraudulently using a Social Security card when the federal government has its own criminal sanction.

Kansas has a backdoor immigration law. Some people will surely favor it: No one likes identity theft. But if red states can enforce their own version of immigration policies, then blue states can pull and tug in the opposite direction. In fact, California has done just that in AB 450, which imposes criminal fines on employers who cooperate with ICE audits and roundups that don’t have a search warrant.

As my wife noted over breakfast, Trump said it was a joke. As for me, I worry every time he jokes (e.g., his joke that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it).