The do-something president

Mollie Tibbetts, 20, a psychology student at the University of Iowa, went for a jog on July 18 and was never seen alive again. She was once a cross-country runner, a good athlete, and hope was fading but still alive when the first month passed and she was still missing. Then her body was recovered on Aug. 21, a life snuffed out before the life could begin in earnest. Miss Tibbetts‘ dreams of life and love vanished with her.

One Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, a Mexican evidently in the country illegally, was arrested and charged with taking that life. His employer, a dairy farm, says Mr. Rivera presented false identification documents and the dairy farm doesn’t knowingly employ illegal workers. The claim is credible, given that 7 of 10 illegal immigrants arrive in the United States with false documents, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Charged with first-degree murder, Mr. Rivera is in jail, where he will stay unless he can put up a $5 million bond in cash.

The murder of Miss Tibbetts is fundamentally a horrific crime and unspeakable tragedy, an example of the sickness that can lurk deep in the human soul. But given Mr. Rivera’s immigration status, it’s a political issue, too. The president came to the White House on the strength of his promise to do something about illegal immigration, which marked him as different from his Republican primary opponents. They were against illegal immigration, too, so they said, but generally wanted to change the subject and talk about something else. So, too, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016. Mr. Trump continued to talk about it, and about the crimes committed by illegal immigrants, sometimes in florid terms, as in his over-the-top remark that “they’re rapists.”

The Democrats, meanwhile, are now embracing the idea that theirs is the party of no borders, no rules and no enforcement of immigration law. At their 2016 convention in Philadelphia, illegal immigrants addressed the crowd from the dais, a clear sign of open contempt for the law. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whether they meant it or not, had in the past paid lip-service to the idea of enforcing the law. When he was a senator from Illinois, Mr. Obama had supported legislation that would have erected a physical barrier along the U.S.-Mexican border. Donald Trump took that idea and ran with, literally.

Leading Democrats now embrace a quixotic campaign to “Abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” which is the agency of the U.S. Homeland Security Department charged with enforcing immigration law. Once a fringe idea relegated to the political margins, the push to “Abolish ICE” is eagerly helped along by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who are expected to be candidates for president in 2020.