Speaking at a press conference held outside the Old New York County New York’s Courthouse (aka “Tweed Courthouse”) on March 21, Mayor Bill de Blasio (shown) announced that it is his new policy that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will not be allowed into any city school unless they provide a warrant. De Blasio was joined in making the announcement by the head of the New York City Department of Education, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
In announcing the new policy, De Blasio told those gathered:
We are reinforcing the fact that a school is a safe and protected location. We will not allow ICE agents to threaten that protection, disrupt classes or take any action that would be detrimental to our students….
We want to be very clear to parents that we’re not allowing ICE agents in the building, because I think parents are so afraid right now. They’re worried that an agent could literally come into the building and single out their child. I know it sounds outlandish, but we’re seeing things that we have not seen before and there’s a tremendous amount of fear out there…. We have to be ready for anything.
The mayor did not explain why someone in a public school who was not in violation of our nation’s immigration laws had any reason to fear ICE officers. But then again, perhaps it is his intention to protect those who are in this country illegally.
The New York Daily News cited a statement from city officials that ICE agents will be kept outside school buildings while school safety officers and the principal summon NYPD officials and city Department of Education attorneys for assistance.
Though De Blasio alluded to the Trump administration’s planned stricter enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws as the motivation from his city’s new policy, he admitted that there have been no instances of ICE agents attempting to detain students or their parents at city schools. The mayor maintained that the guidelines were needed in case ICE agents attempt to enter schools.
Though De Blasio’s statement make it sound as though ICE is readying for an all-out assault on illegal alien hiding among the school population, the ICE spokeswoman in New York’s field office, Rachael Yong Yow, said schools are considered a “sensitive location,” along with churches and hospital centers, where agents are required to get prior approval from a supervisor before picking someone up for repatriation.
De Blasio’s announcement of the new policy came during a program that was part of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ “Cities’ Day of Immigration Action.” The New York event featured — in addition to De Blasio and Fariña — Speaker of the New York City Council Melissa Mark-Viverito, and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Nisha Agarwal.
A March 21 Breitbart report quoted Mark-Viverito description of the new guidelines as a reflection of the “city’s values of fairness and justice,” and her branding of the Trump administration’s immigration policies as “racist.”
“This guideline states clearly and unambiguously ICE can’t come in without a warrant signed by a judge, period,” Mark-Viverito said. “We support restricting ICE’s access to schools, students, and student records — because classrooms should be safe spaces to learn in. Policies like this not only reflect the city’s values of fairness and justice but they also underscore the importance of ensuring that our schools remain safe spaces for our children.”
Mark-Viverito continued:
This talk from this administration, that they’re only focused on those that are hurting our communities is not true — it’s a lie, it’s a dragnet approach, a racist policy that is being implemented by this administration and is focused in particular on communities of color.
Mark-Viverito’s reference to “communities of color” can be exposed as just so much politicking if we consider the makeup of the 8th City Council District, which she represents. Much of the population of that district, which includes East Harlem and the South Bronx, is made up of African American and Puerto Rican residents. Mark-Viverito, herself, was born in Puerto Rico. Since Puerto Rico is U.S. territory, all Puerto Ricans, as well as all African Americans, are U.S. citizens who have nothing to fear from immigration authorities. They are native born Americans who have just as much right to live in the United States as people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
In view of this, Mark-Viverito’s playing of the race card by trying to portray the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration as an assault on “communities of color” simply does not hold any water.
This latest policy regarding ICE and New York’s public school is not the first time that de Blasio has gone head-to-head with the Trump administration. During a Washington Square Park news conference following Trump’s January 25 executive order on border security and immigration enforcement improvements, Bill de Blasio vowed to resist the administration’s proposed block of federal grants to sanctuary cities that harbor illegal aliens and refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities.
“The executive order does not change who we are or how we go about doing our work,” de Blasio said at a the news conference.
“We’re going to defend all of our people, regardless of where they come from and regardless of their documentation status.”
Which is a euphemism for regardless of whether they are in this country legally or illegally.
De Blasio went on to say:
We will not deport law-abiding New Yorkers, we will not tear families apart, we will not leave children without their parents, we will not take breadwinners away from families who have no one else. And we’re not going to undermine the hard-won trust that has developed between our police and their communities.
Perhaps someone should inform De Blasio that someone who has broken our immigration laws cannot be “law-abiding.”
When De Blasio firs ran for mayor in 2013, The New American published an article revealing his pro-communist background. The article noted:
On the same day that President Obama announced his endorsement (September 23), the New York Times published an extensive investigation of de Blasio’s radical Marxist background, focusing particularly on his devotion to the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. De Blasio also has been a big supporter of Cuba’s communist dictator Fidel Castro and Zimbabwe’s murderous kleptocrat Robert Mugabe. He also expressed his support for “democratic socialism.”
Part of an online sketch on De Blasio notes that shortly after completing graduate school at Columbia in 1987, he was hired to work as a political organizer by the Quixote Center in Maryland. In 1988, de Blasio traveled with the Quixote Center to Nicaragua for 10 days to help distribute food and medicine during the Nicaraguan Revolution. He was an ardent supporter of the ruling socialist government, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which was at that time opposed by the Reagan administration.
The Quixote Center was known for its support of the goals of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s. The Center raised more than $100 million in “humanitarian aid” for the Nicaraguan government. It critics accused the Center of following a Marxist agenda and the U.S. Department of the Treasury investigated allegations that the Quixote Center had smuggled guns to Nicaragua.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza, America’s most important ally in Central America, in 1979 and established a revolutionary Marxist government in its place.
Upon assuming office in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan condemned the FSLN for joining with Cuba in supporting “Marxist” revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries such as El Salvador.
Like many American leftists, De Blasio was clearly on the wrong side of the conflict in Nicaragua when he joined the Quixote Center in supporting the Sandinistas.
Photo: Mayor Bill de Blasio
Related articles:
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Law Enforcement and Illegal Aliens Both Anxious About Status of Trump Deportation Actions
Number of Former Sanctuary Cities Reversing Policy
Trump Signs Executive Orders to Build Border Wall and Strengthen Immigration Enforcement
California Advances Bills to Become Sanctuary State
San Francisco Sues Trump to Stop Executive Order About Sanctuary Cities
Illegal Alien Sues San Francisco for Violating Sanctuary City Law
NYC Mayor Candidate De Blasio Takes Flak Over Pro-communist Background
