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Well that escalated quickly. 

Mike Johnston, Mayor of Denver, Colorado, famously embraced Venezuelan migrants, among whom are Tren de Aragua gang members who terrorize Denver-area residents, and has vowed to actively fight Trump administration efforts to deport illegal aliens. 

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Should Trump officials try to enter Denver in numbers to carry out deportations, Johnston has threatened to deploy Denver police at the county line and encourage tens of thousands of citizens to prevent deportations. 

Say what? That sounds insane.

The vast majority of law enforcement is local. Johnston is doubtful that federal forces would raid Colorado to round up immigrants, even if Trump tried to mount a national crackdown.

“I do not believe that our governor is going to let them use our [Colorado] National Guard at the state level,” he said. “Unless they were planning on bringing national guards mobilized from Texas or Alabama to come invade Colorado, I don’t know where they would find the forces to begin to do that.

“And that seems to me like a very, very bad idea from start to finish that no reasonable American would support,” he said.

The mayor also takes heart that the people of Denver — not just the administration — would likely resist a mass deportation effort from federal forces. 

“More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” Johnston said. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right?” You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”

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Johnston is writing checks he won’t be able to cash and is likely posturing to his left-wing base. But if he thinks that Trump and Tom Homan won’t show up to collect, he is likely sorely mistaken. Homan has been very clear: harboring fugitives from the law is a federal offense with jail sentences attached, and deploying armed police to conduct a standoff with federal agents will not end well for him. 

A number of left-wing politicians have been posturing in a similar fashion, ranging from Mayor Johnson of Chicago to Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, but as far as I have seen, their #resistance promises don’t go nearly this far. Johnston has been the first to threaten, implicitly, the use of actual force and mobilization of people to prevent law enforcement action. 

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That’s a dangerous escalation. I doubt Trump would order the use of deadly force, and it would not be warranted, but any confrontation between armed forces is fraught with risk. 

Left-wing rhetoric keeps escalating, and while the top-level power brokers in the Democratic Party understand that antagonizing Trump is politically stupid, activists and politicians who cater to them have incentives to escalate in a very insurrection-y way. 

Even at the height of the Civil Rights movement, local officials hesitated to use armed law enforcement to challenge the power of the federal government to defend segregation policies. To watch left-wingers now threaten what amounts to armed resistance to the legitimate use of federal power is, let us say, very disturbing. 

Will Governor Polis, who pretends to be a moderate, back up Johnston? He has made clear he opposes deportations and will not cooperate, but will he back active resistance to federal law enforcement?

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Stay tuned.