Portland Escapes First Round Of Trump Administration Sanctuary City Crackdown

The U.S. Justice Department sent threat letters to nine cities and jurisdictions, but not Portland.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (greatagain.gov)

The office of Hawaii-bashing U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who thought the Ku Klux Klan was "okay until I found out they smoked pot," on Friday sent letters to nine "sanctuary" jurisdictions around the country, again threatening to withold grant funds for their refusal to cooperate with the Donald Trump administration's "cruel" interpretation of federal immigration laws.

Although it is a sanctuary city, and has been threatened with the loss of millions in federal grant funds, Portland was not among the cities that received a threat letter from Sessions's office before the weekend.

The Justice Department announcement said the letters, which can be read here, were sent to cities "identified in a May 2016 report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General as having laws that potentially violate" a federal law that says public officials "may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual."

The letters ask officials to "submit documentation…that validates that your jurisdiction is in compliance" with that federal law. They were signed by Alan R. Hanson, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, and sent to officials in Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia as well as California and Illinois.

The usually sober and restrained Justice Department used bizarrely ostentatious language in its announcement, saying "many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime," highlighting the murder rate in Chicago—which President Trump suggested he might seek to put under some form of federal control—and declared New York City to be "soft on crime." New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called the Justice Department statement "absurd," "outrageous" and "unacceptable."

The referenced report from May 2016, by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, says the cities that received warning letters this April 21 from the Trump administration were "judgmentally selected" from a larger list of 140 jurisdictions targeted for scrutiny by the department. Like Oregon, those jurisdictions have passed laws and ordinances forbidding public resources and employees from being used for the enforcement of federal immigration law.

WW asked representatives of Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafory to confirm that Portland did not receive any such letters from the Justice Department, and whether they expected to. This post will be updated with their comments.

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