Democratic vice presidential nominee and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine referred to sanctuary cities as a “phantom” in an interview Thursday.
Kaine was asked on CNN about sanctuary cities and replied: “When Donald Trump kind of goes after these phantom sanctuary cities and talks about how bad they are, basically what he’s going after is police chiefs. And I trust police chiefs in terms of knowing what should be done to keep their communities safer and police departments and mayors a lot more than I trust Donald Trump.”
CNN’s Chris Cuomo pushed back on this. “But why do you say phantom? You know that there are places that refuse to cooperate with ICE and they have their assembly of different reasons for why they do it, but sanctuary cities are real. They exist. They’re not phantom,” Cuomo said.
WATCH:
Sanctuary cities are certainly not a phantom. The federal government has acknowledged their existence and many of them are soon to have federal law enforcement funding cut off. Over one third of American citizens live in these jurisdictions that do not comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to detain criminal aliens.