For all the rumors being bantered about concerning President Trump trashing Attorney General Jeff Sessions in hopes of getting him to quit, one might think he’s sitting around waiting for the inevitable.
Don’t look now, but Sessions is doing nothing of the sort.
Keeping good on his promise to take aim at sanctuary cities refusing to enforce federal law, Sessions is readying the trigger to yank tens of millions from some of the nation’s worst offenders.
It’s a sort of one-two punch from the administration.
Just before he left Homeland Security to become White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly ordered ICE agents to go into these cities and clean house.
Sessions is now following that up with a promise to yank federal law enforcement funds to those cities if they refuse to coordinate with ICE.
Just when all hell was about to break loose, some good things have started to happen.
Here’s more from Daily Signal…
The Department of Justice announced last week that sanctuary jurisdictions will lose access to certain federal law enforcement grants in 2017 if they prohibit officials from communicating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if they block ICE from interviewing jail inmates, or if they fail to notify ICE of the pending release of criminal aliens ICE is seeking to deport.
These particular grants, known as the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, are the largest source of federal criminal justice funds for state, local, and tribal authorities.
This move is helping fulfill one early promise of the Trump administration: to impose consequences on the most egregious of the more than 300 sanctuary jurisdictions.
It is significant because a large share of the funds awarded in this program go to sanctuary jurisdictions. For example, according to Justice Department records, the four largest grants, and seven out of the top 10 recipients of the Byrne/JAG grants are sanctuaries.
Under the new rules announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, these four top grant-getters (New York City; Cook County, Illinois; Los Angeles; and Philadelphia) are likely to be disqualified from these grants in the future if they maintain their current policies toward ICE.
These cities received more than $10 million in grants in 2016.
See the table below for a list of sanctuary jurisdictions that received Byrne/JAG grants in 2016. Sanctuary jurisdictions received $32.7 million in 2016.
Ten sanctuaries are already at risk of debarment based on an initiative launched last year by Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the Justice Department’s budget.
