Chicago has sued the Trump regime over Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Session III’s vow to block the city’s application for more than $3 million dollars from a grant that “is the leading source of federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies.” The reason, of course, is the administration’s beef with the city’s so-called “sanctuary city” policy:
“Chicago will not be blackmailed into changing our values, and we are and will remain a welcoming city,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a press conference on Sunday announcing the lawsuit. “The federal government should be working with cities to provide necessary resources to improve public safety, not concocting new schemes to reduce our crime-fighting resources.”
The city argues that the threat to withhold funding violates the Constitution because it federalizes local law enforcement. Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson also said at the press conference that he worries the DOJ policy could cause undocumented immigrants to fear reporting crimes.
That reluctance among immigrants to report crimes is something that has already been documented by the police chiefs of several major cities including Los Angeles, California, and Austin, Texas. And as America’s Voice has noted, “pretty solid” court rulings have decided the federal government can’t use funding threats to strong-arm localities over sanctuary city policies, which limit cooperation with federal immigration agents in order to protect low-priority immigrants from deportation. Jeff Sessions, as attorney general, should already be aware of the law—maybe it’s one of those things he can’t seem to recall?—but instead he’s twisting the arms of leaders in an effort that only makes cities less safe.
"It is a false choice, a wrong choice," said Mayor Emanuel. "We will not allow our officers to be turned into political pawns."
Despite Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant propaganda, sanctuary city policies actually make communities safer by allowing local law enforcement to not act as federal immigration authorities, and in turn build trust with immigrant communities regardless of legal status. When immigrants are able to trust police, they are more likely to report crime, which gets the real “bad hombres” off the streets. But instead, Trump and Sessions want to cut Chicago’s funding over it while spreading lies that undocumented immigrants are to blame for crime in the city. It’s not these families making communities less safe—it’s the boneheaded, anti-immigrant policies and attitudes from this administration:
Supt. Eddie Johnson said the Police Department needs federal resources to "achieve its goals" of turning back the surge of violence that swept the city in 2016 and has shown no sign of abating. The Trump administration should not "play politics with public safety," Johnson added.
"We will not compromise the rights of Chicagoans," Johnson said. "We will not break that sacred trust."
In California—where a bill that would block local resources from being used to collaborate with Trump’s mass deportation agenda is making its way through the legislature—leaders are also mulling a lawsuit against the administration:
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has endorsed the idea of his state suing the Trump administration over its threat to strip federal funding from cities that refuse to comply with federal immigration authorities.
Brown said during an interview airing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that moving the discussion into a "judicial forum" instead of politicians arguing with each other would be beneficial for the country.
“I think a few judicious forums to resolve this dispute between the federal government and California – I think – can be very helpful for the whole country, and in a dispassionate way,” Brown said.