Acting ICE Director Thomas D. Homan.
Alex Brandon / AP
The top immigration officer in the US on Thursday slammed so-called "sanctuary cities" as sending the wrong message to smugglers and immigrants seeking to cross the border illegally.
"Sanctuary cities, that's an alien smuggler's best friend — 'We'll get you to sanctuary city,'" Thomas Homan, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said during a White House press briefing. “Sanctuary cities not only endanger public safety, they endanger our officers.”
His comments come amid a pushback from mayors in cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles after the Trump administration threatened to withhold millions in federal grant money if they didn’t fully cooperate with federal immigration agents and deportation efforts.
Alex Brandon / AP
The United States, Homan added, needs to stop sending the message to people in Mexico and Central America that if they are able to enter illegally, they'll be left alone so long as they stay low.
“It’s not OK to be here,” Homan said. “If you’re in a sanctuary city, that’s where we send additional resources.”
One of Trump’s executive orders put all of the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants at high risk for deportation.
The threat posed by the MS-13 gang also played a prominent role during Homan’s comments, a common specter the administration has used to push their crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
“The proliferation of MS-13 remains an ongoing challenge to law enforcement,” Homan said. “Sanctuary city policies only make it more difficult, if not impossible, for ICE to remove them.”
Despite the Trump administration's emphasis on MS-13 and other gangs, federal data show that less than 1% of unaccompanied children detained at the border since 2012 have been identified as gang members.
Still, it’s often state and local law enforcement that first comes into contact with transnational gangs, Homan noted, and working with those agencies is crucial.
“Together, our gang is bigger than theirs,” he said.
LINK: Trump Keeps Trying To Link MS-13 Gang Violence To Immigrants. The Data Show Otherwise.
LINK: LA Mayor Says He Will Defy Trump Administration On Immigration
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2vNBI1s
No comments:
Post a Comment