Attorney General Jeff Sessions: Sanctuary cities 'undermine' gang fight
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions took fresh aim at sanctuary cities Tuesday, asserting that their failure to cooperate with federal immigration authorities "dangerously undermines'' gang enforcement efforts.
Sessions specifically cited a resurgence of the violent criminal gang Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13. He contended that the so-called sanctuary communities are allowing the criminal group, which draws members from Central American immigrant groups, to flourish.
The attorney general said the gang, largely headquartered in the prisons of El Salvador, numbers more than 10,000 in the United States. Sessions, citing data compiled by the National Gang Intelligence Center, said membership has been rising "significantly'' in recent years, broadening their extortion, human trafficking and illegal drug distribution enterprises.
Gang membership data for the past several years was not immediately available, though the 2015 National Gang Report compiled by the FBI indicated that overall gang membership was steadily increasing.
"Harboring criminal aliens only helps violent gangs like MS-13,'' Sessions told a meeting of the Organized Crime Council, a consortium of agencies across the government. "Sanctuary cities are aiding these cartels to refill their ranks and putting innocent life — including the lives of countless law-abiding immigrants — in danger.''
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Sessions has been at the vanguard of the Trump administration's border security crackdown, which has vowed to punish communities whose law enforcement agencies don't honor requests to detain suspects for up to 48 hours to allow federal authorities to determine detainees' immigration status.
Last week, the Trump administration abruptly stopped publishing a weekly report designed to publicly shame "sanctuary cities" that fail to cooperate with federal immigration authorities after local police agencies complained the reports were filled with errors.
President Trump ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to publish the reports after contending during the contentious campaign that local agencies were releasing criminals who later committed more crimes.
The Tuesday Justice Department meeting was called to "follow through'' on Trump's February executive order, calling for the dismantling of transnational criminal organizations, including MS-13.
Sessions cited six recent murders believed to be linked to the gang, including the deaths of four men whose mutilated bodies were discovered earlier this week in a Long Island, N.Y., park.
