Trump’s immigration agenda: Cops recommend feds arrest sanctuary cities’ leaders
(Photograph: Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Obama’s AG Eric Holder: Holder spent his years with Obama blasting, investigating and trying police officers and sheriffs; Sessions is more interested in protecting Americans from violent criminals, terrorists, gangs and criminal aliens.
On Friday, after repeated statements made by President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and other administration officials, the U.S. Department of Justice sent warning letters to nine jurisdictions which were identified in a May 2016 report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General as having laws that potentially violate 8 U.S.C. § 1373 a/k/a “sanctuary city policies.”
But a number of this nation’s law enforcement commanders believe Trump, Sessions and other administration officials should do more than just cut-off federal grants and other handouts to states and cities. They believe federal cops should be deployed in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and other big cities that claim they are sanctuaries for illegal aliens
According to Sessions, who visited the U.S.-Mexican border along with Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime. The number of murders in Chicago has skyrocketed, rising more than 50 percent from the 2015 levels. New York City continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s “soft on crime” stance.
“Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York may talk tough for the benefit of the news media who march lockstep with the leftist politicians and pro-illegal immigration activists, but de Blasio knows he needs his police officers to uphold his policy,” said former New York police detective Sid Franes. “Not only that, but earlier this month ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] were secretly contacted by New York cops and the ICE teams captured a number of criminal aliens,” Franes added.
The Attorney General also pointed out that “just several weeks ago in California’s Bay Area, after a raid captured 11 MS-13 members on charges including murder, extortion and drug trafficking, 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 letters remind the recipient jurisdictions that, as a condition for receiving certain financial year 2016 funding from the Department of Justice, each of these jurisdictions agreed to provide documentation and an opinion from legal counsel validating that they are in compliance with Section 1373,” according to DOJ officials.
The Department of Justice expects each of these jurisdictions to comply with this grant condition and to submit all documentation to the Office of Justice Programs by June 30, 2017, the deadline imposed by the grant agreement.
“I was hoping that [President] Trump would instruct his top cop Jeff Sessions to just go into these rogue politicians who are ignoring laws that are currently on the books,” Capt. Joseph Kimmler, a former police unit commander from the city’s Bronx County. “Justice [Department] officials should enforce federal laws that address terrorism, organized crime and illegal immigration. During the Obama administration, the AG [Eric Holder] spent years and millions of dollars to harass local police departments that attempted to enforce immigration laws under the auspices of a Immigration and Customs Enforcement program,” Kimmler explained.
According to 8 U.S.C. § 1373 – U.S. Code – Unannotated Title 8. Aliens and Nationality § 1373. –
“Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
During his speech for the Organized Crime Council and OCDETF Executive Committee, Attorney General Sessions released a fact-sheet on the Latino-based gang known as MS-13. Session noted that while MS-13 is not the only transnational gang the Trump administration will target.
“MS-13 has become a symbol of this plague that has spread across our country and into our communities. There are over 30,000 members abroad with their headquarters in the El Salvadoran prison system. According to the National Gang Intelligence Center, MS-13 now has more than 10,000 members in at least 40 states in this country – up significantly from just a few years ago,” Sessions noted.
Meanwhile, former immigration enforcement agent Michael Cutler points out that the 9/11 Commission determined that such activities support terrorist entry into the U.S. In fact, on page 54 of the the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel, this excerpt under the heading, 3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot, is found: “Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.”
