NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
January 26, 2017
Your undocumented immigrants or your federal funds: That is the appallingly brute threat to New York and other so-called sanctuary cities made in an executive order Wednesday from President Trump that purports to keep America safe from terrorists and predatory aliens — while actually threatening to do the opposite.
Trump decreed that states and cities that refuse to help federal immigration authorities apprehend undocumented immigrants will be denied federal grant funds.
What the order means in practice is yet to be seen, but conceivably on the line is $7 billion New York City expects to receive from Washington in the coming year for everything from schools to homeless shelters to domestic violence programs to swimming pools. More likely at stake are as much as $160 million in anti-terrorism and crime-fighting funds, tenuously related as they are to the Trump order’s stated public-safety purpose.
But the law’s not on Mr. Law-and-Order’s side: The feds have minimal power under the 10th Amendment and Supreme Court precedent to compel states and cities to round up immigrants .
It is a ripe irony that one key ruling preventing Washington from bossing localities around was written by a conservative justice beloved by Trump, the late Antonin Scalia, in order to block enforcement of federal gun background checks.
Now that Trump looks to reverse the polarity of federal and local power to match his outrageous campaign pledges to deport immigrants en masse, he finds the President has few cards to play.
He also confronts a mayor in Bill de Blasio who displays laudable spine against the bully tactic, vowing: “We are going to defend all of our people regardless of where they come from and regardless of their documentation status.”
Not quite all: De Blasio, like mayors before him, routinely and correctly turns over felony law-breakers to the feds. And like mayors before him, he listens to the hard-won wisdom of New York police commissioners, a consensus that turning in immigrants undermines public safety by discouraging cooperation by crime witnesses and victims.
Also harmed is public health when wary immigrants forego treatment, and education when kids skip school. Take that from no less of an authority than ex-mayor and current Trumpkin Rudy Giuliani.
“It makes absolutely no sense to create a disincentive for immigrants to report crimes,” Giuliani said in 1996. “Muggers don’t ask for a green card. The federal government should not mandate state and city policies that have the effect of reducing the number of undocumented immigrants reporting crimes.”
If there is any justice, Trump’s flimsy executive order will end up in the dustbin where it belongs.
No comments:
Post a Comment