‘Your State Is a Sanctuary Disaster,’ Ingraham Schools California Congressman

Fox News host Laura Ingraham schooled Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) Tuesday on “The Ingraham Angle,” saying that “we have a criminal alien problem in this United States, and your state is a sanctuary disaster” after he blasted the Trump administration for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The Department of Commerce angered pro-illegal immigrant activists and sanctuary city officials by announcing that the 2020 U.S. decennial census will include the citizenship question to help enforce the federal Voting Rights Act.

California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra retaliated by suing the Trump administration and claiming the question was designed to intimidate illegal immigrants and prevent them from participating in the census for fear of retaliation.

But when Ingraham asked Sherman why Democrats are so “afraid of the U.S. government determining how many illegal immigrants are in the United States,” Sherman dodged the question.

“The census question has nothing to do with how many illegal immigrants are in the United States. They don’t ask whether you’re an illegal immigrant,” Sherman replied.

Ingraham noted that the Trump administration wants “to know who is a citizen and who is a noncitizen.”

“The purpose of this is to suppress not only immigrants from responding but anybody who’s got a cousin who’s an immigrant,” Sherman said, still ignoring Ingraham’s question.

Sherman told Ingraham that the census question was designed to create “incredible fear” in immigrant communities “the way the beginning of your show did” by castigating them and calling them “rapists and murderers.”

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During the beginning of her show, Ingraham included a montage of criminal illegal aliens who made headlines over the past few weeks in cases of rape, attempted kidnapping and fentanyl trafficking.

“Are you defending the criminals that I talked about at the beginning of the show?” Ingraham asked Sherman. “You’re defending the rapists, the child abusers, the murderers, the fentanyl traffickers. Really?”

“Honestly, this is where the Democrats just lose the American people. You are more worried about illegal immigrants than the legal residents of your own communities — time and again,” Ingraham continued. “And now you don’t want us to know how many noncitizens are in the state of California? … We have a criminal alien problem in this United States, and your state is a sanctuary disaster. That’s the problem.”

Sherman still took issue with Ingraham’s montage, saying, “You put up picture after picture of terrible criminals who happen to be people of color.”

But Ingraham fired back, saying, “You don’t want the truth. See, I’m here to tell the truth. You’re here to tell a fantasy about how every illegal immigrant is like a valedictorian rescuing a puppy or cat from the tree. That’s your story. My story is the American victims out there who you and so many Democrats never pay attention to.”

Sherman claimed that the real “falsehood” on the show was “that immigrants are disproportionately criminal. There are 11 million people in this country without documents, and your crack staff found pictures of some who are terrible criminals.”

Sherman added that the “purpose of the census question is to destroy the census by getting people not to return their questionnaires. The purpose of the beginning of your show was to ignore the fact that crime is committed by all groups. You have a crack staff.”

Related: Here’s the Real Reason Dems Oppose Census Change

Sherman argued that U.S. citizens shouldn’t place such a high emphasis on crimes committed by illegal immigrants because illegal immigrants are such a small percentage of total U.S. residents. The congressman said that there’s more crime in the sanctuary state of California than there is in Wyoming because “you have more people in California than Wyoming.”

“Are we to tell the American people tonight that if you — if because California wants to be sanctuary, a fugitive state, whatever you want to call it — we have to sacrifice a certain number of Americans for this utopian idea that borders are pointless, that walls are bad, that the rule of law when applied to, you know, a family crossing the border who wants a better life, you can’t deport them?” Ingraham asked.

“We have to have Americans die on the altar of that?” Ingraham continued. “I just think that’s not a great argument. We want law and order across the board — all people law and order.”

Sherman dodged the question again, saying that “if you want less crime, move to the Cayman Islands. They’ve got so few people there, you can go a whole week without a violent crime.”

When Ingraham pressed Sherman and asked him if he even knew the difference between legal and illegal immigration, Sherman again failed to answer.

“Do you think illegal immigrants should be counted for the apportionment of the number of legislators a state has?” Ingraham asked.

Sherman argued that “the Constitution says that,” while Ingraham pointed out that the Constitution “doesn’t refer to illegal immigrants. It refers to persons.”

“Don’t pollute the census in an effort to achieve a constitutional result you can achieve through the courts,” Sherman responded.

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.