Trump Administration Turns to Anti-Immigrant Scapegoating after Healthcare Defeat

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 27, 2017

MEDIA CONTACT: Oscar Juarez-Luna, oscar@coloradoimmigrant.org, (720) 203-6836

Trump Administration Turns to Anti-Immigrant Scapegoating after Healthcare Defeat

DENVER - Today, the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions targeted so-called “sanctuary cities” in a White House briefing. Only days after the staggering healthcare defeat, Sessions threatened to cut more than four billion dollars in federal funding from local jurisdictions that violate federal immigration law. Following through on a threat from President Trump’s January 25th Executive Order, Sessions indicated that any city which failed to share immigration status or citizenship information with the Immigration and Naturalization Service would be at-risk.

Following quote is from Kyle Huelsman, Policy Manager of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) - “ By conflating ICE detainer holds and federal immigration law, Jeff Sessions is using "alternative facts" to hoodwink the American people. The City of Denver, and every local jurisdiction in the state, is in compliance with federal immigration law. To state otherwise is misleading at best and dishonest at worst. The federal law referenced by the Attorney General (8 U.S.C. 1373) does not require any state or local jurisdiction to honor immigration detainers. The law simply prohibits local jurisdictions from withholding citizenship information from the federal government. We would hope Jeff Sessions would have read the relevant legal statute before attempting to enforce it.”