On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland repealed a Trump-era policy that cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Shortly after being sworn in, Biden overturned a Trump executive order that had allowed the Justice Department to pressure cities that refused to notify federal immigration authorities when people living in the country illegally had been detained for criminal violations, including minor ones.
In an internal memo obtained by Reuters, acting head of the Office of Justice Programs, Maureen Henneberg, ordered that recipients of the department’s annual Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants program, known as “Byrne JAG,” should no longer be required to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a condition of their funding. Henneberg reportedly instructed staff to “pull down and revise all solicitations that describe requirements or priority consideration elements or criteria pertaining to immigration.” “These solicitations will be reposted, and grantees will be required to reapply,” she stated, meaning any pending grant applications with strings attached would be reconsidered.
During Trump’s presidency, the federal government stopped handing out millions of dollars in funding to liberal cities such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco over their refusal to cooperate with ICE. In 2015, the number of sanctuary cities has grown to more than 340, and they shielded an average of 1,000 immigrants a month from deportation last year — and more than 2,000 of those released have been arrested for yet more crimes, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies. Among those released are illegal immigrants accused of murder and brutal assaults, said Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author.
Trump took a stand against the booming crime in the sanctuary cities. As noted in Trump’s executive order, ”Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States. These jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.”
Following the crackdown, several sanctuary jurisdictions sued the Justice Department. But in February 2020, one of those lawsuits, filed by New York and six other states, was derailed when the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Trump administration. The plaintiffs in the case initially appealed to the Supreme Court, but later withdrew the appeal after Biden won the presidency.
Mainstream media and pro-immigration groups slammed Trump and accused him of racism and intimidating immigrant communities.
In reality, the lax policies of sanctuary cities don’t just prevent federal law-enforcement officers from removing illegal aliens from the country, they also block local law-enforcement officers from their primary duty to keep the public safe.
Sanctuary proponents claim illegal immigrants do not commit most crimes. This is a specious argument, because each crime committed by an illegal alien has the unique characteristic of being fully preventable. As former Attorney General Jeff Sessions noted in 2018, “the illegal immigrant crime rate in this country should be zero.”
Think about it: in 2014, there were at least 11.2 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States, or 3.5 percent of our country’s population, yet 50 percent of all federal crimes were committed near our border with Mexico. That same year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that 75 percent of all criminal defendants who were convicted and sentenced for federal drug offenses were illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants were also involved in 17 percent of all drug trafficking sentences and one-third of all federal prison sentences. The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that illegal immigrants were convicted and sentenced for over 13 percent of all crimes committed in the United States. Additionally, a direct correlation between the liberal approach to immigration and crime rate was established: It was found that the violent crime rate in sanctuary cities dramatically increased after sanctuary-city policy was enacted, and even doubled in some cases. Similar results showed for property crime and rape.
Despite the terrifying surge of violent crimes, the local authorities chose to simply release the criminals, allowing them to commit more crimes. According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, 40 to 80 percent of illegals released in sanctuary cities repeat crimes that would never happen if the offenders had been deported.
A common denominator among all sanctuary cities is that they are run by Democrats. They say they welcome illegal immigrants out of compassion, but given the crime rate associated with illegals, this is a lame excuse. Considering the Democrats’ aggressive push to advance federal elections bill H.R. 1, “For the People Act,” that would eliminate all common-sense ID requirements in the elections, all illegal immigrants, criminals included, that are pouring into the country may be considered a potential electoral base for Democrats.
