Why Stephen Miller's sanctuary city plan might actually be great for sanctuary cities

Time to call his bluff

Stephen Miller.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images, phochi/iStock)

Attorney General William Barr and White House aide Stephen Miller have come up with conflicting plans to deal with the rush of fleeing Central American migrants flocking the southern border. Barr wants to deny them bail and hold them in pens on taxpayer dime. Meanwhile, Miller wants to release them to sanctuary cities that are defying Trump's draconian interior enforcement designs to teach these cities a lesson.

Barr's plan is idiocy that is unlikely to accomplish anything. But if sanctuary cities play their cards right, Miller's plan could work out well for everyone and be instructive in ways that he doesn't even realize.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.