Sessions Tries 'Blackmail' Against Sanctuary Cities Not Doing ICE's Job

In a clear sign of the wide gulf separating local governments from the right-wing nationalist administration in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the Justice Department would cease to provide law enforcement grants to states, counties and cities that allegedly “violate” federal immigration laws.

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However, officials across the U.S. immediately responded, dismissing Sessions' threats while indicating that they won't be provoked by what California Senate leader Kevin de Leon blasted as “nothing short of blackmail.”

The announcement comes two months after a Jan. 25 executive order by President Donald Trump that would move to strip federal funding from the so-called sanctuary cities. It also comes as cities and states across the United States make moves to adopt pro-migrant legislation and resolutions to calm widespread anxiety in immigrant communities and respond to social movement demands resulting from an increase in aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, operations aimed at undocumented residents across the country.

“When cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe,” Attorney General Sessions said. Sessions also demanded that cities comply with federal laws stating that government entities are obligated to share information with the federal government regarding residents' immigration and citizenship status, lest they inflict damage on national security and public safety.

However, Sessions' message clearly contradicts a point on public safety that officials have repeatedly stressed: when local police enforce federal immigration law, victims and witnesses to crimes are forced underground for fear of falling prey to what advocates call “poli-migra,” the entanglement of local law enforcement agencies and ICE.

Cleveland City Council member and National League of Cities President Matt Zone noted that the policy imposes undue burdens on local law enforcement, adding: “If the federal government is unable to enforce the nation's broken immigration laws, it should not attempt to shift that burden onto cities.''

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Senator de Leon struck an even more defiant tone, excoriating the Trump administration for “spreading fear and promoting race-based scapegoating," and describing Sessions' threats as being part of an unconstitutional and failing “gun-to-the-head method to force resistant cities and counties to participate in Trump’s inhumane and counterproductive mass-deportation (campaign).”

Indeed, Sessions speech shows that the administration is doubling down on the scapegoating approach that characterized Trump's presidential campaign, as the attorney general described the “criminal aliens” supposedly protected by sanctuary legislation as being charged or convicted of “drug trafficking, hit and run, rape, sex offenses against a child and even murder.”

Advocates across the U.S. have consistently pointed to the unconstitutional nature of federal enforcement and removal operations, including the issuance of ICE detainers or “immigration holds” compelling local and state law enforcement to incarcerate residents for additional time — sometimes days — following their release date, in order to allow ICE agents to potentially take residents into federal custody. Legal experts have criticized detainers as virtual blank checks for ICE to imprison residents without due process — either without charges pending or without allowing suspects time to face a judge or jury.

Cities and states such as California, Washington and Maryland, among others, have adopted sanctuary legislation that includes provisions restricting the use of ICE detainers, except in cases concerning especially egregious felonies and violent crimes. The Department of Homeland Security published a list last week of immigration holds denied by local authorities in 118 communities across the country, a move seen by many as a cynical attempt to drum up xenophobia by criminalizing an overwhelmingly law-abiding immigrant community.

Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a member of Chicago's City Council, pointed to Monday's shooting of 53-year-old Felix Torres by ICE agents as another reason to reject Sessions' threats: “It underscores the need to not collaborate with ICE,” he said of the incident, which is suspected to have been the result of a raid gone wrong. “This morning’s incident shows why people fear ICE.”

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye offered an even starker warning on the effects of federal immigration enforcement on her constituents, claiming that the rule of law itself was at stake: “When we hear of immigration arrests and the fear of immigration arrests in our state courthouses, I am concerned that that kind of information trickles down into the community, the schools, the churches. The families and people will no longer come to court to protect themselves or cooperate or bear witness … I am afraid that will be the end of justice and communities will be less safe and victimization will continue.”