By Bill Parry
Mayor Bill de Blasio chided the Trump administration after a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the president’s executive order to cut federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” Tuesday.
U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick’s temporary restraining order against President Trump’s executive order comes days after a bitter feud broke out between the mayor and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions sent a threatening letter to New York and eight other cities warning officials that defiance of federal immigration law would cost those cities federal grants.
In the letter, the Department of Justice deemed the NYPD as “soft on crime” despite record-low crime statistics. When Police Commissioner James O’Neill’s read the statement, he said “my blood began to boil.” Sessions walked back the tough talk on a Sunday morning talk show, but when the judge’s ruling came down, de Blasio slammed the White House.
“Once again, a federal court has told the Trump administration: ‘No you can’t.’ The president is going beyond his authority when he tries to cut vital funding to cities that don’t share his illogical and unconstitutional desire to scapegoat immigrants,” de Blasio said. “New York is the safest big city in America because we work with all our residents, not against some of them. We said from the beginning that a stroke of a pen in Washington would not change our values or how we protect our people.”
White House officials responded angrily, accusing the court of “egregious overreach,” while Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called the ruling “bananas.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights), the Democratic Caucus chairman, called the ruling welcome news.
“President Trump’s threat to withhold critical federal funds for some cities was misguided. The executive order could have done serious damage to the productive relationships between law enforcement and the immigrant communities needed to keep our communities safe,” Crowley said. “If the president was actually serious about tackling our nation’s broken immigration system, he would join Democrats in supporting comprehensive reform in an intelligent way — not punish cities, like New York City, that simply welcome immigrants to live, work and contribute to society.”
The White House drew the ire of another Queens lawmaker last week after federal agents deported Juan Manuel Montes, 23, back to his native Mexico. Montes failed to produce ID after he left his wallet in a friend’s car. He had lived in the United States since the age of 9, becoming the first Dreamer to be deported despite Trump’s pledge to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
“Beneath every claim that Trump is targeting only ‘bad hombres,’ that DHS is using targeted enforcement, is the cold reality that innocent immigrants, including Dreamers, will inevitably become collateral damage,” state Assemblyman Francisco Moya (D-Jackson Heights) said. “That is the lesson that anyone claiming otherwise should learn from Juan Manuel Montes’ story.”
After Trump told the AP his administration is “not after the Dreamers, we are after the criminals,” Sessions said that Dreamers, like “everyone that enters the country unlawfully” are “subject to deportation.”
“This is a wake-up call,” Moya said. “You’re either OK with kicking kids who’ve only ever known the United States out and into a foreign land, or you’re not. Choose a side.”
Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Astoria) fired off a letter to Justice Janet Di Fiore, the chief judge of the State of New York and head of the Office of Court Administration, strongly urging Di Fiore to implement a policy to limit the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in courthouses in order to maintain access to justice for all people.
“Without adequate protections, the courts become a perfect trap where immigrants can easily be hunted and captured by ICE, rather than being in a place where justice is served,” Simotas wrote.
She said allowing ICE to track and detain immigrants within the courts makes crime victims and witnesses less likely to come forward, which means criminals go free.
“Doing nothing, or waiting and monitoring the situation, has the very real potential to turn immigrants into a subclass of people to whom justice is denied,” Simotas wrote. She stressed that OCA has no way to know the true extent of the problem since ICE agents often wear plainclothes with no badges or identification.
Simotas said that since the president said anyone in the country illegally is deportable, “any undocumented immigrant who shows up in our courts is at risk of being taken into custody.” She discounted ICE claims that courts are used as a last resort when they are pursuing an immigrant.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
