Yesterday, Jeff Sessions & Donald Trump threatened State & Local Governments with the loss of federal funding unless they agree to turn their local police departments into battalions in Donald Trump's Deportation Force.
Some Democrats in the Nevada legislature worked on a bill which would prevent police officers from asking domestic violence victims about their citizenship status. Today, that bill died because Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford, a Democrat, refused to grant it a hearing. In his attempt to explain his abandonment of our immigrant brothers & sisters, Senator Ford gave the Nevada Independent what is, to date, the stupidest statement by a Democrat of the Trump Presidency:
But (Ford) said that “provoking an unpredictable, anti-immigration federal administration” when there isn’t consensus in the state would be “unwise,” adding that he is committed to working with all interested parties to determine what measures can be put in place to protect the immigration community while maintaining a positive relationship with local law enforcement
Everybody who is active in Nevada politics knows that Senator Aaron Ford has big dreams. It is an open secret within Nevada political circles that Ford wants to be Nevada's next Attorney General. I'm not sure how siding with Donald Trump, whose inhumane immigration policies have caused domestic violence victims to forgo calling the police, helps a Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Nevada; but Senator Ford seems to think it does. Also of note: Trump's inhumane immigration policies have led to things like ICE raids on chemotherapy centers where terminally ill brain cancer patients were ripped from their families & sent to detention centers.
Leaders who have actually led efforts to reduce violent crime, like former Maryland Governor and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, know that crime only goes down when relationships of trust between law enforcement and minority communities are built.
Mayors and their police chiefs know that public trust is essential to crime reduction. This is why — over the last several years — city after city opted out of the practice of blindly cooperating with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau (ICE).
ICE was increasingly deporting thousands of people without any real public safety rationale, and they were increasingly using local law enforcement functions and jails to do it for them. Every traffic stop and call to 911 became an opportunity for ICE to check someone’s immigration status and deport that person.
Mayors and their police chiefs rightly said, no more. If for public safety reasons ICE wants a person held and deported, it needs to present the legally required paperwork to local law enforcement in order to do so. This is not an unreasonable request. This also does not create criminal sanctuaries. In fact, in my own State, this sort of warrant based on due process is required by the State Constitution.
Mayors and their Police Chiefs are right to stand up to the immigrant bashing carnival barker, Donald Trump on this one.
It is the one of many important moral fights that will tell whether we have leaned anything from history. Stand up, Mayors. And hold strong.
It is a shame Aaron Ford & the Democratic Caucus in the Nevada State Senate didn't hold strong on an issue where Donald Trump is so wrong, and that is so important to every single community in Nevada. It is my firm hope that another Democrat will run against Ford for Attorney General in 2018. Both Clark County DA Steve Wolfson & Mineral County DA Sean Rowe are Democrats who would be far better AGs than the Trump-fearing Aaron Ford.