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The day after Donald Trump provided safe harbor to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and the defeated Confederacy, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III visited Florida to continue his ongoing personal cause against so-called “sanctuary cities,” using the Miami stop to spread anti-immigrant distortions, lies, and further attempt to strong-arm those small governments that conservatives allegedly champion:
Speaking in Miami, where county authorities hold prisoners for federal immigration agents, Sessions said sanctuary policies are an example of “lawlessness” and again vowed to cut off federal funding to communities that use them.
Although the link between illegal immigration and rising crime is weak — studies show immigrants tend to commit crimes at lower rates than other people — Sessions suggested Miami’s policies contributed to a dramatic drop in murders.
“The same Independence Day weekend when Chicago suffered more than 100 shootings and 15 homicides, Miami-Dade also had a historic number of shooting deaths — zero,” he said.
He said the Trump administration would not continue giving money to cities “that actively undermine the safety and efficacy of federal law enforcement and actively frustrate efforts to reduce crime in their cities.”
“I have said it before and I will say it again, undocumented immigrants are not driving violence in Chicago and that’s why I want our officers focused on community policing and not trying to be the immigration police,” Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent, responded.
Sessions was also touting a recent decision from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez to toss the locality’s pro-immigrant sanctuary policy—a decision that came with heavy blowback from the local community—in the wake of Trump’s rise. But as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) noted in a tweetstorm that debunked Sessions play-by-play, he cited some “crime reduction stats from 2016 when Miami had community trust policies in place.” Oops.
America’s most racist Keebler elf is already facing lawsuits from California, Chicago, and San Francisco over his threat to starve localities of federal funds unless they cooperate with federal immigration authorities, oftentimes in unconstitutional ways.
But the fact is, nothing stops Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from entering cities to conduct immigration operations. What pro-sanctuary city localities are saying, is that they won’t use their local resources or officers to aid an immoral mass deportation force and terrorize their immigrant residents. And as the CHC explains, local law enforcement support locally decided sanctuary city policies because they help make communities safer:
Of course, Jeff Sessions doesn’t care about being repeatedly humiliated by his boss or about the fact that his boss is wrapped up in self-inflicted chaos, because the attorney general of the Confederacy is exactly where he’s always wanted to be: in a position to make life for immigrants as hellish as possible. And he won’t stop until he’s physically dragged out of the Justice Department building.