Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in-studio to comment upon the recent shipment of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard and other sanctuary cities.
Leahy: In-studio, all-star panelist Clint Brewer. Clint, fun story of the day. (Laughs) You gotta love this story. “Top Gov” Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, a breaking story from Fox News Digital. Earlier this morning, a plane arrived at Martha’s Vineyard, the elite tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts, it’s part of the state of Massachusetts. It’s where Barack Obama has, like, a $15 million compound and all the Hollywood types summer there.
He sent a plane filled with illegal aliens who were in Florida. (Chuckling) He sent them to Martha’s Vineyard, and they got off there because Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, are sanctuary states.
Brewer: And, you know, people paint Governor DeSantis as this serious guy with no sense of humor. (Leahy laughs) It’s not entirely funny. There are actual human beings involved here.
Leahy: Hold on, hold on. Let me oppose that. I understand, but listen …
Brewer: Let’s not laugh too hard, I guess.
Leahy: … all of the shipments of illegal – well, I’m going to get to something on this – all the shipments of illegal aliens, they cross the border, let’s say when it was Greg Abbott sending them off to Chicago in New York or Philadelphia, they cross the border. They’re living in kind of a dump in Laredo, Texas. And they go to them and say, would you like us to ship you to the Big Apple?
Brewer: Would you like to go to Martha’s Vineyard?
Leahy: How hard is that? How many of them are saying, oh, no, keep me here in this little …
Brewer: First of all, they weren’t asked. Second of all, they probably don’t know …
Leahy: They were asked.
Brewer: Oh, they were asked.
Leahy: Yes, they were asked. And they all signed, would you like to go to … But really, if you’re an illegal alien living in, wherever, in not nice a situation on the border or in various places in Florida, and somebody gives you a piece of paper and says, would you like to go to Martha’s Vineyard? Sign me up, they say!
Brewer: I struggle with this issue. Not with what Governor DeSantis did. But you have to get in the head of most people who come to this country illegally. They’re in a desperate situation. They’re coming from places that are not nice, usually in Central America.
Leahy: Are you kinder and gentler?
Brewer: Well, I feel for them. Who would not want to be in America? If you lived in Central America – have you been to Central America? – you would want to get to North America if you were in Central America.
Leahy: Unless you’re in Costa Rica.
Brewer: Okay, yeah, the tourist side of Costa Rica is nice. The rest of it is not.
Leahy: I have a buddy from high school …
Brewer: An ex-pat living down there? You can live nice down there on American dollars. But that’s sort of my point. And I don’t know, I think it’s interesting. The Republican Party’s gains with Hispanic voters in the last election, there are continued gains …
Leahy: There are many polls out showing that the Hispanic voters are increasingly moving to Republican.
Brewer: There are. And there’s a high level of entrepreneurship and business ownership in the Hispanic community. They do, I can assure you, understand the concept of paying taxes, and they don’t like it any more than the rest of us.
But there’s not a translation politically any longer between being tough on illegal immigration and winning the Hispanic vote. And what I’ve read in the polling is many Hispanics who are here legally take exception to people who take big exceptions …
Leahy: Big exceptions.
Brewer: Huge exceptions to people who do it illegally. But that being said, I just think conservatives shouldn’t be dispassionate to the reasons why.
Leahy: Are you a compassionate conservative? (Chuckles) I’m giving you a hard time.
Brewer: I know you are, but it’s a great country. Why wouldn’t you want to?
Leahy: Well, of course, but I’m setting this all up, because it is amusing.
Brewer: The Martha Vineyard’s part is pretty doggone amusing.
Leahy: Yeah, of course. Governor Greg Abbott started the whole thing. And again, the whole thing is amusing because they send these illegal aliens to sanctuary cities like Chicago. [Mayor] Lori Lightfoot says, oh yeah, we welcome all these illegal aliens – they call them migrants – and then the next thing you know, she’s shipping them off to the suburbs. You saw that.
And then Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C. says, oh, no, I need the National Guard to help me. What’s going on? What you’re seeing in Washington, D.C. with a few dozen of these illegal aliens is nothing like what’s going on at the border. But, let me pose this to you: is it more of a fun stunt to point out the hypocrisy, or, whose policies do you think you think are going to be more effective?
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas … their idea is they are transporting illegal aliens that are coming over here illegally, and instead of having them in their state, they’re shipping them off to other sanctuary states and cities. But Kari Lake, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, has a different idea. She’s not a fan of that.
Brewer: She’s going to hold them.
Leahy: She’s going to send them back to Mexico. She’s not a fan of it because, what she says she’s going to do is this: on day one, if she is elected in November, on day one, she’s going to declare an invasion of the border, and she’s going to bring the National Guard down there, and she’s not going to let them in. She’s going to send them back.
Brewer: So here’s an even better idea.
Leahy: Clint has a better idea.
Brewer: How about if we win the Senate and the House, and then get together with our governors and put forth an immigration policy that actually makes sense and get it passed? Wouldn’t that be a great way to approach the whole thing?
Leahy: It would, except …
Brewer: If everybody had their eye on the prize. Wouldn’t that be a great way to do it?
Leahy: Except here’s the problem. All that legislation. If Republicans took the House and took the Senate, it would be vetoed by the grifter in chief.
Brewer: Well yeah.
Leahy: Right? So then you’re talking January 2025.
Brewer: Sooner or later, somebody is going to have to come up with a reasonable, passable, sane, immigration policy.
Leahy: I think Kari Lake’s policy is very sane. That’s the right way to go. But let me ask you this. Under current law, although the federal government could send the illegal aliens back, I don’t believe that the state governors have the legal authority to send an illegal alien that’s crossed the border into Mexico back to Mexico, but they can send them to a sanctuary city. Tell me what I got wrong.
Brewer: No, I don’t think you have anything wrong.
Leahy: You think it’s right?
Brewer: I think it’s right. What if we had a policy in America, in this country, where we were incredibly tough on illegal immigration. You know, to stop them?
Leahy: Like the law currently says?
Brewer: What if we actually follow the law that was put in place …
Leahy: I’m in favor of that.
Brewer: … 40 or 50 years ago that we’ve never followed?
Leahy: We followed it, but now we’re not following it at all.
Brewer: What if we just followed the laws we had, but we added to that a robust migrant worker program, a visa program, where people who just wanted to work in America could come work in America, and we track them and we tax them.
We know who they are. We know where they are. We know where they work. And it’s legal. And in some markets where the labor force is needed, it’s even encouraged.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Brewer should be required to live with the mess down on the border. Possibly his “compassion” for illegals would dry up. I lived in the Houston area for 30+ years until I moved here in 2006. The whole area was afloat with illegals. My daughters were harassed by them and the single males hung out on street corners in droves. Forgive me if I do not have any sympathy for those coming into America illegally. But I have dealt with it personally.