As part of the broader agenda to crack down on illegal immigration, President Donald Trump and his administration had set their sights on the various liberal-dominated states and municipalities that instituted “sanctuary city” policies that protected illegal immigrants from being turned over to federal immigration enforcement officials.
While the ideal of providing a limited safe haven for “undocumented” immigrants who are otherwise law-abiding residents simply trying to work and raise a family without fear of imminent deportation has its supporters, in practice the “sanctuary” policies inevitably end up shielding known and suspected criminal illegal immigrants from rightfully being deported. This makes communities far less safe as those criminals are typically released from police custody back onto the streets.
Trump and his administration attempted to address sanctuary city policies in 2017 with a new Department of Justice policy — announced in July 2017 — that threatened to withhold certain federal grant funds from locales with sanctuary policies unless those locales agreed to cooperate with federal officials and hand over — or at least allow access to — criminal illegal immigrants that by law should be deported back to their home countries.
Of course, liberals across the country challenged the new policy in various courts, and “The Hill” just reported that a federal judge in New York has issued a ruling that declares the policy to withhold federal grant funds from sanctuary cities to be illegal and unconstitutional.
Judge Edgardo Ramos, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by former President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the federal government “did not have lawful authority” to compel states and municipalities to either report to federal agents when detained illegal immigrants were about to be released, nor could they be compelled to allow federal agents access to question detained illegal immigrants about their legal status, as conditions upon which federal grant funds could be withheld.
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