Sessions lays out cost of defiance
Sanctuary cities would lose access to Justice grants
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday pinpointed just what funds sanctuary cities and states stand to lose if they continue to protect immigrants in the country without proper documentation.
Cities and states that don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration officials would be prohibited from applying for Department of Justice grants, Sessions said at the White House. He also indicated those cities and states would have to return any grant money they had already received.
San Francisco and Richmond could each lose more than $2 million, while Berkeley would lose just $34,000. Oakland did not respond to a request for information. The grants fund everything from body cameras for police officers to alternative court programs that emphasize
rehabilitation over incarceration.
“I strongly urge our nation’s states and cities and counties to consider carefully the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to enforce our immigration laws, and to rethink these policies,” Sessions said. “Such policies make their cities and states less safe — public safety, as well as national security, are at stake — and put them at risk of losing federal dollars.”
Local and state officials vowed to fight any attempt to take away that money.
“It’s a low blow to our brave men and women in uniform to threaten to withhold public safety funding that they have earned unless Donald Trump gets his way on immigration,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “We will fight to protect those policing resources, just as we will protect all the residents of our state against unconstitutional overreach by our federal government.”
Deirdre Hussey, a spokeswoman for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, said in a statement that Sessions was “attempting to coerce cities into enforcing federal immigration laws.”
Hussey gave no indication that the city would change its policy.
“As we have always asserted, sanctuary cities are safer cities,” she said. “It is shocking that the U.S. attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official, does not agree with this basic principle of public safety.”
San Francisco receives $1.77 million through two programs — the Office of Justice Programs and Community Oriented Policing Services — singled out by Sessions. That includes money for police overtime for drug investigations and enforcement, substance abuse treatment for underserved populations and for ending sexual assault in prisons.
On top of that, San Francisco Superior Court receives around $400,000 for innovative programs that emphasize rehabilitation, such as veterans justice court and behavioral health court. A spokeswoman for the court did not respond to a request for comment.
Richmond receives around $2.6 million in Justice Department grants, although it’s unclear if all of that money would be affected by Sessions’ directive. But at least some of it would be, including $150,000 to outfit police officers with body cameras.
Political analysts said President Trump’s decision to go after public safety money carries a political risk, both for Trump because he has championed a law-and-order agenda, as well as for city officials who may have to justify why their immigration policies are putting at risk money for popular causes.
Shortly after Sessions’ announcement, the International Association of Chiefs of Police criticized the directive.
“Penalizing communities by withholding assistance funding to law enforcement agencies and other critical programs is counter-productive to our shared mission of reducing violent crime and keeping our communities safe,” the organization said in a statement.
Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University, said cities’ refusal to cooperate with Trump’s immigration policies marks a turning point in the fight between the administration and sanctuary cities.
“It’s no longer symbolic,” McDaniel said. “If this starts being about policing funds, about transportation funds and all the things that the city relies upon ... it’s going to be a tough balancing act for mayors like Ed Lee.”
While any future loss of funds would present a challenge for Bay Area cities, the most immediate question will probably be whether the Trump administration could “claw back” — as Sessions put it — money it had already given to sanctuary cities.
Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a Santa Clara University law professor, said that would be difficult.
“It’s not clear that the attorney general and Department of Justice can make up these interpretations as they go along,” he said.
Bill Ong Hing, University of San Francisco law professor and director of the law school’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic, was even more critical.
“They definitely cannot take away money that they already gave,” he said. “He can threaten all he wants, but he actually needs to go through Congress to get the authority.”
And even then, Hing said, it was questionable whether the Trump administration could force local law enforcement to carry out federal immigration policy.
“They simply cannot commandeer local law enforcement to do their work.” he said.
The latter argument is also made, Hing said, in the lawsuits filed by San Francisco, Santa Clara County and Richmond against Trump’s executive order to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities. Those lawsuits are ongoing.