U.S. puts pressure on sanctuary cities

AG seeks documents, issues threat; some mayors boycott Trump meeting

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration increased its pressure on so-called sanctuary cities Wednesday, asking those local governments to prove they had not kept information from federal immigration authorities.

In a letter, the Justice Department asked 23 cities and states for copies of policies, laws, or directives that prevent law enforcement officials from sharing information with federal officials, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would subpoena local governments that failed to respond in a full and timely manner.

“Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies common sense and undermines the rule of law,” Sessions said in a statement.

Sessions has blamed sanctuary city policies for crime and gang violence, saying Wednesday, “We have seen too many examples of the threat to public safety represented by jurisdictions that actively thwart the federal government’s immigration enforcement — enough is enough.”

In a forceful rebuke of the Justice Department’s request, mayors of New York, Chicago and other cities declined to attend a scheduled meeting to discuss infrastructure with Trump at the White House.

Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday that he saw the Justice Department’s

move as an “attack” and that he could not “in good conscience” attend the White House meeting.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio denounced the move as a renewal of the Justice Department’s “racist assault on our immigrant communities,” saying in a tweet that he was canceling plans to attend the meeting.

The 23 jurisdictions that were issued a letter demanding documents include cities in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Vermont and Washington, and the state of Oregon.

The Justice Department contacted those local governments last year over concerns that they had violated a federal statute that says they must not restrict communications with federal authorities about citizenship or immigration status.

In his statement Wednesday, Sessions reiterated that those local governments would lose federal funding if they violated that statute. The sentiment was echoed by a senior Justice Department official who said the department was taking a step to ensure that communities that accepted federal tax money were complying with federal law.

The official would not say what would happen if local governments ignored Sessions’ letter and fought the subpoena in court, but he said he was optimistic that the jurisdictions would comply with the request for documents.

Trump has promised to dramatically restrict immigration, and Sessions has taken a hard line on the issue since his days as an Alabama senator. Since Trump took office, both men have focused on sanctuary cities, which generally refuse to hold people

on immigration agents’ behalf without a warrant from a judge, accusing such places of flouting the law and helping convicted criminals evade deportation.

The Trump administration says it’s a matter of maintaining public safety. Trump campaigned for the White House denouncing “weak and foolish policies” that he said let criminals into the country and then failed to deport them. Among cases he publicized was the death of Kathryn Steinle, who was shot in San Francisco in 2015 by an illegal alien who had previously been deported multiple times.

Local officials counter that separating local law enforcement from federal immigration authorities is good policy both legally — they have previously faced lawsuits over honoring immigration detention requests — and from a public safety standpoint, making illegal aliens more likely to report crimes and serve as witnesses.

Over the past year, the local jurisdictions have pushed back hard on the administration’s attempts to force them

to abandon their stance by cutting off federal funding to them, with some like Chicago filing lawsuits against the Justice Department.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office has called the Justice Department’s actions “misguided.” And district judges in California and Illinois have filed preliminary nationwide injunctions blocking the department from denying grant money to sanctuary cities.

On Wednesday, 15 attorneys general filed a brief in support of the Chicago lawsuit, saying that the administration’s efforts to pull federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions infringes on their right to set their own law enforcement policies.

“The Trump administration cannot strip a city or a police department of these critical funds, simply because they don’t like its policies,” Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, said in a statement.

“President Trump and the DOJ do not have the authority to unilaterally transform state and local police into federal immigration agents — or to force a city or state

to decide between vital law enforcement grants and the policies they know are necessary to protect public safety,” Schneiderman said.

The letters to the 23 jurisdictions were sent nearly a week after Senate Democrats asked the departments of Justice and Homeland Security for more information about whether the administration would criminally charge local politicians over local laws that create protections for immigrants.

The Justice Department official emphasized that the department was fighting to enforce a statute enacted during former President Barack Obama’s administration. He added that the letters were sent after a review conducted by the department’s inspector general, which had evaluated whether many jurisdictions were still eligible for federal dollars based on their compliance with the statute.

Based on the review, the department determined that it needed to require nearly two dozen jurisdictions to produce documents related to information sharing with federal immigration agents, including details about their local laws and anything pertaining to policies or practices that could restrict information sharing.

Several of the local officials whom the Justice Department had targeted were blindsided by the letters and had not received them before the government announced them.

“The Trump administration is once again threatening California and local jurisdictions because we are invoking our constitutionally protected right to protect our resources and the honest, hardworking people who are critical to our economy,” said Kevin de Leon, the leader of the California state Senate. “No number of threatening letters will change the fact that we are in compliance with federal law, nor will we be bullied or intimidated into betraying our immigrant community.”