http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/trump-admin-sanctuary-cities/index.html
CNN’s Tal Kopan reports:
“Washington (CNN)The Trump administration opened up a new salvo against sanctuary cities on Tuesday — moving to make immigration enforcement a pre-condition for receiving key law enforcement grants.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday evening that applicants for Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants will be required to certify that they’ll cooperate with federal immigration enforcement more extensively than in the past, a move that is likely to generate court challenges quickly from advocates and state and local jurisdictions who have opposed President Donald Trump’s efforts.
Among the requirements: Letting federal authorities access detainees in jails to inquire about immigration status and giving the federal government 48 hours’ notice before any inmate they’re interested in is released.
The term sanctuary city loosely refers to jurisdictions that in some way do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Localities have a variety of justifications for doing so, from protecting undocumented immigrants to preserving law enforcement’s ability to gain the trust and cooperation of communities. Some jurisdictions have also been barred by the courts from complying with certain federal requests.
Trump himself railed against sanctuary cities during a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Tuesday. He drew out a long and graphic description of violent gang members torturing and killing young women.
“These are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long,” Trump said. “Well, they’re not being protected any longer folks. And that is why my administration is launching a nationwide crackdown on sanctuary cities.”
He hailed legislation in Congress targeting sanctuary cities and Kate’s Law, named for a woman allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant. He called on the Senate to vote on the bills now that they had passed the House.
“We’ve got to get it passed,” he said.
Sanctuary cities have been a key focus of the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington. The President signed an executive order in January that threatened to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, which immediately prompted a court challenge.
A federal judge this spring blocked the administration from enforcing that order broadly — limiting them to restricting the Edward Byrne grants based on a piece of law that requires localities to communicate immigration information about individuals to the federal government when asked.
. . . .
The Justice Department, however, stopped short of requiring compliance with “detainers” — requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold individuals suspected of being in the country illegally an extra 48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be released from custody. The administration has made complying with detainers a key piece of their efforts on sanctuary cities, although nothing in law requires local law enforcement to comply.
In fact, the latest slap from the courts came on Monday, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it is a violation of state law to ask local law enforcement to comply with detainer requests without a criminal warrant, based on the fact that immigration violations are a civil crime — and thus Massachusetts law enforcement cannot arrest a person and hold them based on a civil infraction.”
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Read Tal’s complete report and watch the accompanying video at the link.
Let’s see, we’ll promote law enforcement by cutting off grants to law enforcement. That makes lots of sense. We’ll promote cooperation with local law enforcement by insulting and threatening them rather than by sitting down and discussing common solutions.
White Nationalists should be concerned about Trump’s vendetta against Sessions. No future Attorney General could possibly match Sessions’s enthusiasm for and commitment to the White Nationalist agenda and his racial, cultural, and ethnic insensitivity. Yet, Trump seems far less interested in an Attorney General who will continue to advance the White Nationalist racially divisive platform that he ran on than in finding an Attorney General who will “see job number one” as protecting Trump and his family from the legal and political consequences of their own actions. And, loyalty to the Constitution and the People of the U.S. — not even concepts that Trump understands, much less accepts.
PWS
07-25-17