The other day in a thread about illegal immigration and deportation, I posted some words of Trey Gowdy’s from a commencement address at Liberty University:

Let me tell you something about the law. It is the most unifying and equalizing force that we have in this country. It is the only thing that makes the richest person in this county drive the same speed limit as the poorest. It is what makes the richest person in Virginia pay his or her taxes on precisely the same day as the poorest.

As Trump’s inauguration draws closer, and as he continues to fill his cabinet with right-wing picks, and as he continues to make a fool of himself on Twitter, I continue to believe that the DNC and the GOP establishment made space for all of this to happen by failing for so many years to take a stand for the rule of law on the matter of immigration. The wall issue gave Trump so much traction in his campaign, early and late.

The thing is, illegal immigration doesn’t negatively effect people with money and power. Illegal immigrants aren’t moving into their neighborhoods, changing the culture around them, and competing for their jobs, or—really—affecting them much in any way at all. As Ted Cruz said, last November, “The politics of [illegal immigration] would be very, very, different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande—or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press.”

I think this is a very important point in the aftermath of Trump’s election, and Gowdy’s quote made it click for me.

The refusal to enforce the law on immigration and on border controls is really an unequal use of the law. Whether they realize it or not, those with power and money have decided that a certain segment of law that primarily protects the interests of poor, non-elite citizens doesn’t matter. And they’ve failed to enforce it. This failure is analogous to me to busting poor people for speeding, but not the rich.

And while non-elites may often be poorer and have less education than those in power, they aren’t stupid. They know a raw deal when they see one just as much as my six-year-old daughter (sniff, now seven) knows when her older brother is giving her a raw deal.

How America handles the immigration question is a matter of social justice. But it is also a matter of justice—a matter of law.

As long as the political establishment continues their failure of enforcing the law in this area, so long will Trump and people like him have a potent weapon in their Populist arsenal. Our political establishment, for the sake of their own agendas, and for the sake of this country, needs to start consistently and thoroughly enforcing the rule of law at our borders and in regards to illegal immigration.