by Jacob G. Hornberger

July 2, 2026

This week — the week in which Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence — U.S. immigration police arrested a Catholic nun in McAllen, Texas, as she was walking to Mass. They handcuffed her, confiscated her rosary, and incarcerated her.

But before anyone reacts too harshly to such misconduct, let’s keep in mind some important points.

It is the responsibility of the U.S. immigration police to keep us safe. Who’s to say that woman was really a nun? She could easily have been a Muslim fanatic disguised as a nun who was invading America to establish a worldwide caliphate and Sharia law. Indeed, she could have been a terrorist, drug dealer or, even worse, both — a narco-terrorist! The fact that she was black obviously made her more suspicious because, after all, the Rio Grande Valley is not populated by a large number of blacks. Oh, and don’t forget that rosaries have sharp edges on the crucifix. And couldn’t the chain of rosary beads be used to choke someone?

This week (and, well, every week), it’s worth reminding ourselves that the U.S. immigration-control system and the deadly and ruthless immigration police state that comes with it are antithetical to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, specifically the part that describes “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as natural, God-given rights that adhere to every human being on the planet, not just to American citizens.

In other words, everyone in the world has the natural, God-given rights to sustain his life through labor, to freely travel and move, and to pursue happiness in his own way. No government — not even the U.S. government — wields the legitimate authority to infringe, control, destroy, regulate, manage, or direct rights that are bestowed on people by nature and God.

In fact, it’s worth reminding ourselves that one of the reasons that the British colonists took up arms against their own government was the imposition of immigration controls by their king, King George.

Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that when the Constitution called the federal government into existence some ten years later, that document did not give the federal government the power to control immigration.

Thus, for most of the 19th century, Americans lived under a system of open borders, a concept that is anathema to most Americans today. In fact, the first immigration control act — the Page Act of 1875 — came into existence as part of the “Ellis Island” immigration-control system that statists were foisting onto the United States. Prior to the Ellis Island system, Americans lived under a system of open immigration.

In 1882, the Ellis Island immigration-control system was used to enact the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was one of the most racially bigoted laws in U.S. history. It prohibited any and all Chinese citizens from immigrating to America.

Later, the Ellis Island immigration-control system was used to prevent German Jews from immigrating to the United States during the 1930s, when Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was willing to let them go. The ban turned out to be America’s immigration-control system’s contribution to the Holocaust.

It’s also worth noting that after the U.S. government used the Mexican War to steal the northern half of Mexico in 1848, the U.S. and Mexico had an open border. That is, Mexicans and Americans could travel freely back and forth across the new border. Of course, that was perfectly normal for Mexicans, given that the new U.S. lands had just recently been their country.

Nonetheless, in the late 1800s the Ellis Island immigration central planners permitted most European immigrants — around 98 percent — to enter the United States. The word “permitted” is, of course, the opposite of the word “liberty.” Governmental permission to sustain one’s life through labor, to travel and move freely, and to pursue happiness is the opposite of the exercise of natural God-given rights.

It’s important to recognize that under America’s founding system of open immigration, there were no government central planners determining who the best immigrants were who would be permitted to enter the United States. Thus, the people who were coming were mostly those who today would be considered the dregs of society — that is, the extreme poor, the uneducated, and those who couldn’t speak English.

Indeed, the American poet Emma Lazarus described them best in the poem that is inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Ironically, many of those poor people or their children ended up becoming multimillionaires by inventing or producing goods and services that others were willing to pay for. Andrew Carnegie comes to mind. After accumulating an enormous amount of wealth, he gave away around $350 million — and not to get an income-tax deduction because there was no income tax or IRS.

In fact, it’s also worth reminding ourselves that Americans in 1876 were celebrating a concept of freedom that was opposite to the concept of “freedom” that Americans celebrate today: No income tax or IRS, drug laws, Social Security, Medicare, welfare state, national security state, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, ICE, Border Patrol, FBI, paper money, Federal Reserve, minimum-wage laws, foreign wars, war on communism, war on terrorism, sanctions, embargoes, blockades, or a regulated/managed economy.

And no deadly, ruthless, and terrifying immigration police state! No fixed highway checkpoints. No roving Border Patrol checkpoints. No kidnappings by masked government agents. No criminalization of hiring, transporting, and caring for illegal immigrants. No violent raids on American businesses. No mass deportations. No Berlin Wall along the border. No state-sponsored murders of American protestors.

Of course, Americans today celebrate all this immigration tyranny as “freedom.” But at least they are being kept “safe” from the drug dealers, the illegal immigrant invaders, the terrorists, the Muslims, the Reds, the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Catholic nuns.

Resources:

The Case for Open Borders: A Primer by Jacob Hornberger
The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration, edited by Richard Ebeling and Jacob Hornberger
The Case for Open Borders by John Washington
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan
Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders by Jason Riley
Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom by Ilya Somin
Immigration and Freedom by Chandran Kukathas