Trump calls ‘sanctuary city’ mayors ‘best friends’ of crime
WASHINGTON – President Trump delivered a stern message on “sanctuary cities” to the nation’s mayors Wednesday, saying cities that don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials “are the best friends of gangs and cartels.”
Trump’s spoke to mayors in the East Room of the White House about the economy, infrastructure and the opioid crisis.
Some of the 109 invited mayors boycotted the event, protesting the Justice Department’s threat hours earlier to subpoena 23 cities it said harbor undocumented immigrants accused of crimes.
“The mayors who choose to boycott this event have put the needs of criminal, illegal immigrants over law-abiding Americans,” Trump said. “But let me tell you, the vast majority of people showed up.”
The Justice Department’s escalation of the immigration debate came as the Trump administration tries to court state and local officials of both parties to sell a bipartisan infrastructure bill that Trump hopes will be a signature achievement of his second year in office.
Immigration politics overshadowed what would have otherwise been the biggest headline of the event: Trump said the infrastructure package he’ll roll out in his State of the Union Address next week will total $1.7 trillion — more than the $1 trillion he previously floated. “Oh, you like that?” Trump said to applause. “I can tell we have mayors in the room.”
It’s unclear how many skipped the meeting, but they included the mayors of New York, Boston, Denver and New Orleans. The mayors gathered at a hotel three blocks from the White House for their annual winter meeting.
“I can’t in good conscience, as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, go to the White House under false pretenses to talk about infrastructure,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said. “An attack on one of our great American cities, or one of our small cities, is an attack on all of us.”
He called the Justice Department’s action a “punch in the face” and said it would poison the well on bipartisan issues. “One thing we never do is invite people into a comfortable space and then go outside and throw a bomb,” Landrieu said. “We would not invite someone over for lunch and then excoriate them on the front porch. My mama taught me better than that.”
The White House said it remains committed to working across the aisle on infrastructure, but its position on sanctuary cities has been clear from the beginning.