Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III continues his war on American communities, threatening to subpoena 23 so-called “sanctuary cities,” including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, unless they hand over documents showing whether they’re cooperating with Donald Trump’s racist mass deportation force:
In the letters addressed to officials in the cities, counties and states, the Justice Department demanded "any orders, directives, instruction or guidance" issued to "law enforcement employees" regarding their relationship with immigration agencies under the Department of Homeland Security.
“I continue to urge all jurisdictions under review to reconsider policies that place the safety of their communities and their residents at risk,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a written statement. “Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies common sense and undermines the rule of law.”
Except these locally enacted, pro-immigrant policies actually make communities safer, because local law enforcement officers are able to build trust with immigrant communities. If there’s two people making cities more dangerous and the jobs of local police more difficult, it’s “pro-police” Trump and America’s most racist Keebler elf.
“I currently lead a department of 5,200 law enforcements officers and 1,200 support personnel,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo in a recent op-ed. “They will tell you that the ugly national anti-immigrant rhetoric has had a chilling effect on their work with residents. They are now less willing to work with our police to report suspicious activity.”
According to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, last month “Los Angeles police were able to apprehend a suspect accused of shooting a police officer within minutes because of cooperation from the immigrant community.”
“Local officials have argued that targeting immigrants only discourages their cooperation with police”:
Sessions has made it one of his top priorities to crack down on sanctuary cities, a term that describes more than 300 local governments that have limited their cooperation with federal immigration officials.
Last year, Sessions threatened to withhold millions of dollars of federal assistance if local governments could not prove that they were cooperating with federal authorities.
"I continue to urge all jurisdictions under review to reconsider policies that place the safety of their communities and their residents at risk," Sessions said Wednesday in a written statement. "Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies common sense and undermines the rule of law."
But courts have said that what Trump and Sessions are demanding—for police to hold immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) even after they’ve been cleared of whatever they were arrested for—is unconstitutional. So it’s so-called “sanctuary cities,” not the president and attorney general, who are actually following the law here.
As Buzzfeed notes, Sessions’s threat has now sparked a feud among mayors and Trump. Leaders from the nonpartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) were scheduled to meet with Trump this week, but instead several condemned Sessions’s latest threat, and one skipped the meeting altogether:
“Many mayors of both parties were looking forward to visiting the White House today to speak about infrastructure and other issues of pressing importance to the 82 percent of Americans who call cities home," said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, president of the mayors group.
"Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s decision to threaten mayors and demonize immigrants yet again — and use cities as political props in the process — has made this meeting untenable."
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called the subpoena threat a renewal of the Trump administration's "racist assault on our immigrant communities."
“Bring it,” tweeted California Lieutenant Governor and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. “Your racist political stunts are getting old and will not work on us.”