New York Mayor Bill de Blasio talked tough about negating President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda that could affect Muslim or illegal city residents, but he does not seem to know how exactly to counteract the consequences of resisting Trump’s policies.
Mayor de Blasio promised during remarks Monday that if Trump mandated Muslims to register their personal information in a federal government database he would go to court for them and order the New York Police Department not to report any illegal immigrant to the federal government.
“If all Muslims are required to register, we will take legal action to block it,” de Blasio promised. “If the federal government wants our police officers to tear immigrant families apart, we will refuse to do it.”
The mayor went on to say, “If the federal government tries to deport law-abiding New Yorkers who have no representation, we will step in. We will work and build on the work of the City Council to provide these New Yorkers with the lawyers they need to protect them and their families.”
Additionally, de Blasio even pledged to defy the Justice Department if the agency ordered local police to resume stop-and-frisk.
“We will not comply,” he said. “We won’t trade in neighborhood policing for racial profiling.”
However, when asked by the New York Observer how he plans to make up for the federal dollars the city would lose as a penalty for not complying with federal law, de Blasio did not have much of an answer.
“Look, we’re gonna seek to resolve these issues when we can but if the federal government asks the city of New York to do something that we think is against our vital interests, we’re prepared to stand up,” de Blasio told the Observer. “I’m not gonna speculate about the funding issues because it’s way too early to tell.”
Much of the federal government money that the city receives goes toward housing, public hospitals and the New York Police Department. The Observer noted that even under the Obama administration, the mayor has routinely had to ask Washington to maintain anti-terror appropriations for New York well as give more financing to the housing authority and Health Hospitals system.