The Department of Justice sent letters Friday to nine separate jurisdictions that were identified in May 2016 by the DOJ’s Inspector General as having laws that potentially violate federal law on immigration enforcement.
The Justice Department statement says, “The letters remind the recipient jurisdictions that, as a condition for receiving certain financial year 2016 funding from the Department of Justice, each of these jurisdictions agreed to provide documentation and an opinion from legal counsel validating that they are in compliance with Section 1373.”
The letters were sent to city officials in Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee and New York City, along with the state of California and Cook County, Ill.
The statement continues, “The Department of Justice expects each of these jurisdictions to comply with this grant condition and to submit all documentation to the Office of Justice Programs by June 30, 2017, the deadline imposed by the grant agreement.”
The announcement from DOJ falls on the heels of the recent visit to the southern border made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly.
The Justice Department’s statement also notes violent crime rates in cities like New York, Chicago and California’s Bay Area “are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration.”
“The number of murders in Chicago has skyrocketed, rising more than 50 percent from the 2015 levels. New York City continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance. And just several weeks ago in California’s Bay Area, after a raid captured 11 MS-13 members on charges including murder, extortion and drug trafficking, city officials seemed more concerned with reassuring illegal immigrants that the raid was unrelated to immigration than with warning other MS-13 members that they were next.”
Several of the jurisdictions who received the letter have already vowed to fight the administration’s enforcement of federal law in regards to their own sanctuary city policies.
“Any attempt to cut NYPD funding for the nation’s top terror target will be aggressively fought in court. We won’t back down from protecting New Yorkers from terror – or from an overzealous administration fixated on xenophobia and needless division,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said last month.