BUDGET/IMMIGRATION/SANCTUARY CITIES: “New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and dozens of legislators from around the country are dismissing the Trump administration’s threat to cut millions of dollars in federal funding from sanctuary cities as an illegal maneuver to bully cities into enforcing immigration law, even as Attorney General Jeff Sessions aired that threat Monday [3-27-17] from the White House.
‘This is nothing new in terms of the threats that the federal administration has been making, but it really is sad that the security of our city, the security of our country, would be put at stake to just meet a campaign promise to a dwindling base,’ Mark-Viverito told reporters gathered at Borough of Manhattan Community College for a conference on sanctuary city policy hosted by ThinkProgress.
‘It is illegal for the federal government to withdraw funds in a punitive fashion from cities that they say are refusing to comply with ill guided policies and laws that they are enacting,’ she added.
At Monday’s policy gathering, city officials from around the country weighed their options over how to appropriately defy Trump’s immigration orders. Some of the lawmakers, including representatives from blue cities in red states, described fears of putting targets on their backs by not complying with federal law.
But Mark-Viverito insisted to reporters that leaders of sanctuary cities had a chance to show strength to Washington by coming together.”
-Gloria Pazmino, “At sanctuary cities gathering, policymakers vow to become Trump’s ‘worst nightmare’,” Politico, March 27, 2017