Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul believes that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston saying that he will resist President-elect Donald Trump’s effort to deport illegal immigrants would be “a form of insurrection,” and as we know insurrection is a crime in the United States that can land you behind bars.

“We are going to continue to be a welcoming, open, big-hearted city that’s gonna stand by our values,” the mayor said last week. “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.”

When he appeared on the CBS Sunday show “Face The Nation,” the senator warned that his vow, if he sticks to it, could be a crime.

“You know, I’m 100% supportive of going after the 15,000 murderers, the 13,000 sexual assault perpetrators, rapists, all these people. Let’s send them on their way to prison or back home to another prison,” Paul told anchor Margaret Brennan.

“So I would say All-points bulletin, all in but you don’t do it with the Army because it’s illegal. We’ve, we’ve had a distrust of putting the army into our streets, because the police have a difficult job but the police understand the Fourth Amendment. They have to go to Judges. They have to get warrants. It has to be specific. And so I’m for removing these people, but I would do it through the normal process of domestic policing,” he continued.

“Now, I would say that the mayor of Denver, if he’s going to resist federal law, which there’s a longstanding history of the supremacy of federal law, he’s going to resist that it will go all the way to the Supreme Court. And I would suspect that he would be removed from office. I don’t know whether or not there’d be a criminal prosecution for someone resisting federal law, but he will lose,” the senator said.

“And people need to realize that what he is offering is a form of insurrection, where the states resist the federal government. Most people objected to that and rejected that long ago. So I think the mayor of Denver is on the wrong side of history, and really, I think will face legal ramifications if he doesn’t obey the federal law,” said Paul.

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