Immigration

Sessions Issues Impotent Threat to Sanctuary Cities

Written by SK Ashby

Trump's approval rating his fallen to it's lowest point yet (36 percent, per Gallup) and the GOP's entire agenda is in doubt so, naturally, the White House is ready to get back to what it does best: being very racist.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a surprise appearance at today's White House press briefing where he warned so-called sanctuary cities that their law enforcement agencies could be cut off from federal grant funding.

That's probably not possible but also ironic for reasons Sessions himself laid out.

American municipalities that refuse to help with federal immigration enforcement, known as "sanctuary cities," are at risk of losing some funding from the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said told reporters Monday.

"Public safety as well as national security are at stake and put them at risk of losing federal dollars," Sessions said, in a surprise appearance at Monday's White House briefing.

If public safety is at risk, how is denying millions of dollars in public safety grant funding going to benefit public safety?

Incoherence aside, Congress controls federal funding, not the White House or Jeff Sessions. Republicans in Congress could theoretically include a provision to accomplish this in their next spending bill, but that seems unlikely because, for many Republicans, it would mean defunding police departments in their own states and home towns. Sessions was careful to say that police departments "could" be defunded while not promising that they would be.

Even in that event, the largest sanctuary cities like New York and Los Angeles are more than capable of fully funding their own police departments and, frankly, it may be for the best if financial ties between the Trump regime and America's police departments are severed. That's the kind of baggage no one needs, even if you're a conservative police chief.

It can't be overstated that what the Trump regime is upset about is local refusal to be deputized as deportation agents. If refusing that comes at the cost of a few police cruisers, most cities and departments are going to turn it down.

Contrary to Jeff Sessions' claims, sanctuary cities are often safer than others.