NEW YORK (AP) – Ignoring fresh threats from the White House, city leaders across the U.S. are vowing to intensify their fight against President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on so-called “sanctuary cities” despite the financial risks.
“We are going to become this administration’s worst nightmare,” New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said Monday during a gathering of municipal officials from urban centers such as San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Chicago and Philadelphia.
As is the case in several sanctuary cities, they promised to continue blocking cooperation between city police departments and federal immigration authorities. They also vowed to prevent federal agents from accessing their schools and school records, and they openly contemplated employing cities’ rarely-used oversight and subpoena powers to investigate federal immigration practices.
The defiance that filled the New York City conference clashed with pointed warnings from the White House’s West Wing, where Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a dire warning to urban leaders who embrace policies that help protect immigrants in the country illegally from deportation.
Such policies, Sessions said, “endanger the lives of every American” and violate federal law. He said the Trump White House could withhold or “claw back” funding from any city that “willfully violates” immigration law.