Banana Republic politics

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Monday he would hold mayors of so-called sanctuary cities "criminally culpable" for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their cities.

Sanctuary cities like San Francisco often do not honor federal authorities' requests to hold undocumented immigrants in custody so they can be deported -- policies that have come under the microscope after an undocumented immigrant who had recently evaded deportation allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle in San Francisco.

"Absolutely," Jindal, who is a Republican contender for the presidency, said Monday morning on Boston Herald Radio when asked whether he believed mayors of those cities should be arrested. "I would hold them as an accomplice. Make them criminally culpable."

Jindal added that he thinks those mayors should also be liable for civil damages.

"Especially if the prosecutor isn't taking action or if the mayor's not changing their ways, I'd allow the families to go to court and sue them civilly as well to recover damages," Jindal said.

The comments come after Jindal announced last Thursday a "partners in crime" plan to hold city officials accountable for the crimes of undocumented immigrants in their cities. The plan calls for Congress to pass legislation that would make city officials "an accessory" to those crimes and give victims' families standing to sue.

As if the GOP’s decision to start seriously debating how to undermine the 14th Amendment weren’t bad enough, earlier this week an influential conservative Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson debuted a brilliant idea for how to deal with undocumented immigrants — reinstitute slavery.

On his August 17th program, Mickelson proposed putting up signs all over Iowa saying that “as of this date, 30 to 60 days from now, anyone who is in the state of Iowa who is not here legally and who cannot demonstrate their legal status to the satisfaction of the local and state authorities here in the State of Iowa, become[s] property of the State of Iowa.”

“We have a job for you,” he speculated telling the newly enslaved people of Iowa, before shifting to the practical benefits of slavery. “We start using compelled labor, the people who are here illegally would therefore be owned by the state and become an asset of the state rather than a liability and we start inventing jobs for them to do.”

If the Mexican government won’t pay to build Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful, powerful wall,” we will “‘invite’ the illegal Mexicans and illegals aliens to build it. You show up without an invitation? You get to be a construction worker!”

“If you have come across the border illegally, again give them another 60-day guideline, you need to go home and leave this jurisdiction, and if you don’t you become property of the United States, and guess what?” Mickelson asked. “You will be building a wall. We will compel your labor. You would belong to these United States. You show up without an invitation, you get to be an asset.”

When a caller later pointed out the obvious — that this “sounds an awful lot like slavery” — Mickelson replied by asking “What’s wrong with slavery?” He proceeded to claim that the real slaves were the taxpayers on whose largesse undocumented immigrants allegedly depend.

“We allow millions of people to come into the country, who aren’t here legally, and people who are here are indentured to those people to pay their bills, their education of their kids, pay for their food, their food stamps, their medical bills, in some cases even subsidize their housing, and somehow the people who own the country, who pay the bills, pay the taxes, they get indentured to the new people who are not even supposed to be here,” he said. “Isn’t that a lot like slavery?”