Sessions urges cities to comply with immigration detainers

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions made an unannounced appearance Monday at the White House where he re-urged sanctuary cities to comply with federal immigration detention requests or risk losing billions in federal grant funding.

"Such policies cannot continue,'' Sessions said from the White House briefing room. "They make our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on our streets.''

Sessions' public appearance turned up the heat on yet another campaign promise to accelerate the removal of illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security published a list of 118 communities that have refused to cooperate with federal requests to detain undocumented immigrants.

President Trump ordered the DHS to publish weekly a list of detention requests denied by local authorities, as part of an executive order signed just days after his inauguration.

"The American people are justifiably angry,'' said Sessions, whose hard line on immigration as a former Alabama senator has deeply influenced the administration's early policy decisions. "They know that when cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe.''

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Many local law enforcement and municipal officials, however, have long argued that they should not be required to enforce federal immigration laws.

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National League of Cities President Matt Zone, a Cleveland City Council member, said the federal policy imposes "a needless burden on local police forces.''

"If the federal government is unable to enforce the nation's broken immigration laws, it should not attempt to shift that burden onto cities,'' Zone said.

"Attorney General Jeff Sessions seeks to create a police state in which local and state law enforcement are acting at the behest of the federal government to round up immigrants in communities across the country,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Cities seeking to comply with the constitution and protect immigrant communities should be able to do so without heavy-handed threats from the federal government.''

In his public remarks Monday, Sessions referred multiple times to the need for local jurisdictions to comply with the law — 8 U.S.C. 1373 — or risk losing eligibility for more than $4.1 billion in federal grants. The law Sessions cited, however, requires only that local law enforcement agencies to at least share information with federal immigration authorities.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in 2014 that local police departments are not required to hold undocumented immigrants for ICE.

Contributing: Deborah Berry