Trumpcare flopped bigly last week, so Donald Trump’s regime has fallen back to doing what they always do best: attacking undocumented immigrants and their families. During a press conference earlier today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to punish cities that have taken or will take steps to protect undocumented immigrants, by starving them of federal dollars:
Sessions said Monday that the Justice Department will begin using federal law to prevent any "sanctuary cities" from receiving much coveted federal grants for state and local law enforcement.
"I urge our nation's states and cities to consider carefully the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to enforce our immigration laws, and to rethink these policies," Sessions said from the White House. "Such policies make their cities and states less safe, and put them at risk of losing valuable federal dollars."
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions seeks to create a police state in which local and state law enforcement are acting at the behest of the federal government to round up immigrants in communities across the country,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
“Cities seeking to comply with the constitution and protect immigrant communities should be able to do so without heavy-handed threats from the federal government. We will continue to stand up against this administration’s actions that promote unlawful profiling and xenophobia.”
Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of immigrant rights group America’s Voice Education Fund, called the move “political gamesmanship” at the expense of public safety:
Sessions said nothing new today, but he’s trying to move the media narrative to what the Trump Administration believes to be more favorable ground for them – scapegoating and maligning immigrants.
The fact that the DOJ wants to take public safety money away from certain jurisdictions shows that the goal here is not protecting the public, it’s political gamesmanship.
The fact is, as Tramonte states, so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions actually have lower crime rates than other cities, thanks to the “trust between local law enforcement and the entire community.” But when that trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement is broken, undocumented immigrants are less likely to report crimes out of fear of being arrested.
“Public safety depends on trust between law enforcement and those they bravely serve,” said New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “Yet, again and again, President Trump’s draconian policies only serve to undercut that trust.”