WASHINGTON -- Following up on President Trump’s promises to crack down on cities and counties that refuse to turn over illegal immigrants to federal officials, Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday said jurisdictions must demonstrate that they are not so-called “sanctuary cities” in order to receive grants from the Justice Department.
In a move that could mean the loss of billions of dollars to local jurisdictions across the United States, Sessions referred to Trump’s executive order issued in January, telling a news conference that “this disregard for law must end. Today I’m urging states and local jurisdictions to comply with the federal laws,” including 8 U.S. Code, Section 1373.”
That law dictates “communication between government agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service” and says that states and local jurisdictions must comply with request by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for information “regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
“Moreover,” said Sessions, “the Department of Justice will require that jurisdictions seeking or applying for Department of Justice grants to certify compliance with 1373 as a condition of receiving those awards.”
The news has broad implications for the Bay Area, which has a number of sanctuary counties including San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Alameda, as well as a cities like Oakland and San Jose. Executives at these local entities have been bracing for bad news since late January when President Trump signed orders to clamp down on illegal immigration. That move set up an inevitable showdown between the White House and cities like San Francisco where leaders have vowed to to fight efforts to hand over illegal immigrants to the federal government for deportation.
State ?Senate ?President Pro Tem? Kevin de Leon?, D-Los Angeles,? ?blasted Sessions’ announcement, saying it? was “nothing short of blackmail.”
“Instead of making us safer, the Trump administration is spreading fear and promoting race-based scapegoating?,” the Senate leader said in a statement Monday.? ??”Their gun-to-the-head method to force resistant cities and counties to participate in Trump’s inhumane and counterproductive mass-deportation is unconstitutional and will fail.”
State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, also took to Twitter, vowing the state would fight the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“Sessions threatens sanctuary cities, slanders immigrants as `dangerous criminals,’ Wiener ?tweeted?. “He’s wrong and we will #resist.”
While Santa Clara County has never officially designated itself as a sanctuary destination, its supervisors have repeatedly said they would not cooperate with so-called ICE holds.
In 2011, Santa Clara County opted to refuse to hold any inmates unless ICE paid for the cost of detaining them — which the agency will not do — making it one of the first counties in the nation with such a policy.
The county filed a lawsuit last month challenging Trump’s threat to defund counties that don’t comply with his immigration enforcement plan. Board President Dave Cortese said a ruling on an injunction is expected early next month.
The lawsuit challenges the president’s authority to strip federal funds, stating that such power lies with Congress.
After ICE released its first report of declined detainer requests last week — a list of noncomplying jurisdictions that included Santa Clara and Alameda counties — Cortese said administration has yet to be clear about what constitutes a “sanctuary” city or county.
“There are areas where we have offered cooperation to ICE, with regard to serious violent felons, and they don’t really respond one way or the other,” he said, “so we don’t know what category that puts us in.”
In his January order, Trump announced the federal government would step up its efforts to rein in illegal immigration and as part of that campaign his press spokesman, Sean Spicer, said sanctuary cities would be stripped of federal grants. That could mean real financial pain for the Bay Area: Oakland, for instance, is getting more than $130 million in ongoing and one-time grants from Uncle Sam in its current fiscal year. Those funds, which Trump has threatened to withdraw, subsidizes things like school lunches for poor kids, seismic retrofitting, and additional police officers on the street. San Jose officials say the city received $78 million in federal funding this year.
Sessions’ message came days after the administration released a report on local jails that listed more than 200 cases of immigrants released from custody before federal agents could intervene. That list was compiled following an executive order Trump signed in January that called on the government to document which local jurisdictions aren’t cooperating with federal efforts to find and deport immigrants in the country illegally.
Meanwhile, municipal leaders gathered in New York vowed to defy Trump’s crackdown as they gathered for a small conference that attracted officials from cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York.
“We are going to become this administration’s worst nightmare,” said New York City council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Mark-Viverito and others promised to block federal immigration agents from accessing certain private areas on city property, to restrict their access to schools and school records and to offer legal services to immigrants in the country illegally. City officials were also encouraged to embrace their rarely used oversight and subpoena powers to investigate federal immigration practices.
Copyright 2017 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
Tribune News Service
