Thread: Sanctuary Cities Face Aid Cuts as Justice Dept. Tightens Screws

Sanctuary Cities Face Aid Cuts as Justice Dept. Tightens Screws

By CHARLIE SAVAGEAPRIL 21, 2017


Attorney General Jeff Sessions outside the White House on Monday. CreditAl Drago/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The Trump administration escalated its confrontation with so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, threatening them anew Friday with the loss of grant money if they do not remove certain barriers.

The Justice Department sent letters to officials in New York City, Philadelphia, California and other places singled out last year by the agency’s inspector general for regulations that interfere with the ability of police or sheriffs to communicate with federal immigration authorities about the status of prisoners in their custody.
“Many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime,” the Justice Department said in a news release.

The agency cited the rising murder rate in Chicago and cast blame for gang murders in New York on what it labeled a “soft on crime” stance. It also complained that after the recent arrests of 11 members of the MS-13 Salvadoran street gang, the deputy police chief of Santa Cruz, Calif., stressed that the raid was unrelated to immigration instead of “warning other MS-13 members that they would be next.”

President Trump ran on a platform of cracking down on illegal immigration and issued an executive order during his first week in office aimed at jump-starting that process. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned that recipients of federal law enforcement grants were required to comply with a 1996 law that bars the local authorities from forcing officials to withhold information from federal immigration authorities about people’s immigration status.
The recipients of the letters were warned that as a condition of receiving 2016 grants, they must certify by June 30 that they were in compliance with the law. That enforced a deadline on a policy put in place under the Obama administration, which announced the policy last July but gave cities not in compliance time to adjust.
After Mr. Sessions’s remarks, several municipal leaders vowed defiance; Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said he would fight in court any attempt to strip funding from the city.

On Friday, Nisha Agarwal, the commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs in New York, said the city was prepared to respond by the June 30 deadline. She declined to say what the city would tell the government.
In California, where Democrats have waged a defiant opposition to the Trump administration, the State Senate leader, Kevin de León of Los Angeles, charged that it was basing its law enforcement policies “on principles of white supremacy — not American values.”

Mr. de Blasio and other top New York officials also batted back against the “soft on crime” label in the Justice Department’s statement.

“We did not become the safest big city in America by being ‘soft on crime,’” Mr. de Blasio said, standing with the city’s police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, both stone-faced, in Police Headquarters. “This is an insult, this statement.”
New York City is at or near historic lows in most areas of major crime, from murder to auto theft.
The Justice Department doubled down after Mr. de Blasio’s comments, repeating its “soft on crime” description. That prompted Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney for New York’s Southern District, to question why the Justice Department “would ignorantly malign” the New York Police Department. “That makes no one safer,” Mr. Bharara said on Twitter.
The dollar amounts for the grants in question are relatively small compared with the overall budgets of governments that received the letters. For example, according to the Justice Department, the City of New York received a $4.3 million grant in 2016.
Other places sent a letter included the State of California, which received $10.4 million, divvied up among 128 cities and counties; Chicago and its county, Cook, shared a $2.3 million grant; New Orleans, $265,832; Las Vegas’s Clark County, $11,537; Miami-Dade County, $481,347; Milwaukee County, $937,932; and Philadelphia, $1.7 million. Each letter was signed by Alan R. Hanson, the acting director of the Office of Justice Programs, which administers the Byrne law enforcement grant program.

“Failure to comply with this condition could result in the withholding of grant funds, suspension or termination of the grant, ineligibility for future O.J.P. grants or subgrants, or other action, as appropriate,” Mr. Hanson wrote.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/u...epartment.html

National Security
Sessions takes step toward enforcing threat to strip funding from ‘sanctuary cities’












Jeff Sessions takes steps to strip 'sanctuary cities' of funding


Play Video1:22



Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he sent letters to nine 'sanctuary cities' to provide proof that they are communicating with federal authorities about undocumented immigrants or they will risk losing grant funding on April 21. (Reuters)

By Matt Zapotosky April 21 at 3:04 PM
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday demanded that nine jurisdictions produce proof that they are communicating with federal authorities about undocumented immigrants or risk losing grant funding.
Sessions sent letters to the nine jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, New York and Chicago, in the latest sign that the Trump administration intends to punish what are sometimes called sanctuary cities that do not cooperate in its promised crackdown on illegal immigration.
[Sanctuary cities debate has jurisdictions weighing whether to defend the policy]
President Trump signed an executive order in January declaring that sanctuary jurisdictions would not be eligible to receive federal grants, and Sessions vowed last month during a White House news conference to take Justice Department money from such places.
How far Trump can go, though, and what jurisdictions can do to avoid his ire, remains unclear.
How sanctuary cities work, and how Trump’s executive order might affect them VIEW GRAPHIC

In a news release, the Justice Department said that the places were identified in a Justice Department Inspector General’s Office report from May 2016 as potentially having policies that hindered communication with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The letters were addressed to officials in New Orleans; Philadelphia; Chicago; New York City; Clark County, Nev.; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Milwaukee County, Wis.; Cook County, Ill.; and the state of California.

“Additionally, many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime,” the Justice Department wrote in a news release, casting aspersions on New York, Chicago and the Bay Area in particular.
The release said New York, for example, “continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance.” New York, in fact, has seen significant recent reductions in crime. The statement said crime in Chicago had “skyrocketed.” And it said that after a raid on MS-13 members in the Bay Area, “city officials seemed more concerned with reassuring illegal immigrants that the raid was unrelated to immigration than with warning other MS-13 members that they were next.”
The grants at stake provide federal funding for a host of functions in the criminal-justice system — including policing, victim-and-witness initiatives, crime prevention, drug-treatment programs and technology improvements.
Representatives of the jurisdictions said they believed that they already had been complying with federal law and disputed Sessions’s characterization of what was happening.
[Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeats Trump threat that ‘sanctuary cities’ could lose Justice Department grants]
Sessions professes 'zero tolerance for gang violence' under Trump


Play Video1:34



Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke out against gang violence, specifically transnational organizations like MS-13, on April 18, and said sanctuary cities "dangerously undermine" efforts to wipe out gangs. (The Washington Post)

Zach Butterworth, the director of federal relations for the city of New Orleans and executive counsel to the mayor, said that the city welcomed the letter and would respond next week telling Sessions they were fully complying with federal law. He said that sanctuary city was an ill-defined term and New Orleans did not accept the moniker.
“There’s a lot of political talk, but there’s no legal analysis,” Butterworth said. “We say we’re not one because we follow federal law.”
While the city tells its police officers not to ask people they encounter about their immigration status, it does not block them from talking to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Butterworth said. He said the city updated its policy to better reflect federal law last year.
“If they need one more letter, we’re happy to send it, and we’ll get it turned around quickly,” Butterworth said.
Michael Hernández, the communications director for Miami-Dade County, said Mayor Carlos A. Giménez (R) “strongly believes that we are in compliance” with the law, and noted that the county had begun earlier this year to honor all requests from ICE to detain potential undocumented immigrants taken into custody on local charges. That move prompted Trump to praise the county in January. “Right decision. Strong!” he wrote on Twitter. Sessions himself said in a recent Fox News appearance he was “pleased that Miami complied.”
Hernández said the county had stopped honoring the requests in 2013 because the federal government was not providing reimbursement for the cost of detaining suspected undocumented immigrants, but, fearing the loss of federal funding, officials had decided to change course.

“We never proclaimed to be a sanctuary community before then, and we haven’t since,” Hernández said. “We always have worked with federal authorities on all matters, including immigration.”
Seth Stein, a spokesman for city hall in New York City, said the administration’s push was “nothing new” and the “grandstanding shows how out of touch the Trump administration is with reality.”
“Contrary to their alternative facts, New York is the safest big city in the country, with crime at record lows in large part because we have policies in place to encourage cooperation between NYPD and immigrant communities,” he said.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele said in a statement officials were “in compliance with the law and will share the required legal opinion by the date requested,” though the Justice Department’s comments about illegal immigration and violent crime were “neither accurate nor productive.”
“Milwaukee County has its challenges, but they are not caused by illegal immigration,” Abele said. “My far greater concern is the proactive dissemination of misinformation, fear, and intolerance.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) said in a statement: “Neither the facts nor the law are on their side. Regardless, let me be clear: Chicago’s values and Chicago’s future are not for sale.”

The law that Sessions wants enforced is very narrow, and it would not bar any of the policies that people generally associate with sanctuary jurisdictions.




When someone is arrested on a local crime, their fingerprints are run through the FBI database, and — whether local authorities like it or not — ICE can tell if they are in the country illegally. It then often will send a request to local authorities to detain such people.
Refusing to honor such a request would not necessarily violate federal law. But telling local police officers, for example, that they could not give information to their ICE counterparts might.
The Obama administration also had considered compliance with the law a requirement for receiving Justice Department grants, and in response to the Inspector General’s Office report, even issued guidance on the subject. Cities, though, have said they are worried that Sessions’s threats are not mere talk.
Seattle, San Francisco and Santa Clara County have sued over the matter, asking a federal judge to block Trump’s executive order and stop Sessions from making good on his threat. The Justice Department has fought the cases in court, and acting assistant attorney general Chad Readler argued at a recent hearing that it was premature for the judge to consider because the Justice Department had not yet taken any sort of “enforcement action.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.fcea27537943

Ok, I'm not good at editing, but in that second article, where the blank spaces are, there are supposed to be 2 videos of Jeff Sessions speaking. I guess if you want to see the videos, just follow the source link at the bottom to go to the original article.

This is what the crooked mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel had to say in response.....


"Chicago has in the past been a sanctuary city. ... It always will be a sanctuary city," the mayor said.

I hate this guy. This affects me since I live in the Chicago area. I'm gonna have to think of moving away from this crappy, illegal alien infested crap-hole city.

Yes, that's what to do. The embedded videos in articles can't be transferred in most instances.

Originally Posted by Judy

Yes, that's what to do. The embedded videos in articles can't be transferred in most instances.

Ok, so it's not because I suck at editing. That's good, at least I know it's not because I'm stupid at editing these articles.

Originally Posted by 6 Million Dollar Man

Ok, so it's not because I suck at editing. That's good, at least I know it's not because I'm stupid at editing these articles.

No, it's not you, it's the way the programs are written. If you see one that has a YouTube link, then you can open it in YouTube, and then use our video insert feature to transfer those.

Originally Posted by Judy

No, it's not you, it's the way the programs are written. If you see one that has a YouTube link, then you can open it in YouTube, and then use our video insert feature to transfer those.

Thanks Judy. That's good to know. I will keep that in mind for future articles. I wish this one had a youtube link so people wouldn't have to go back to the original article just to watch the videos. Oh well, what do you expect from the Washington Post.

We should also petition Sessions to make it a federal crime to employ illegals, with a hefty fine and possible jail time.