Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called on Washington to pay local governments anxious about cooperating with federal immigration officials, in what would be a move designed to use cash to sway their opinions on deportation.
The junior republican senator issued the appeal at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing while rattling off a long list of right wing complaints about the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama.
“Sanctuary cities continue unabated. They don’t even honor your detainers,” he told DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, referring to requests that the department sends to local police departments when it wants one of their foreign prisoners in federal custody. “Why we would not push back against that utilizing financial incentives, I don’t know.”
In 2013, House Republicans introduced legislation that would have “allow[ed] for–and even provide[d] financial incentives to–local and state enforcement of immigration laws.” That year, it passed out of the judiciary committee in a 20-15 vote, but got no further.
Earlier in the hearing, Johnson, had recognized that it is in the interest of local communities to thwart an administration seeking to add to the record number of undocumented immigrants it has deported. When asked by committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) why interior apprehensions have fallen over the past few years, Johnson noted that overall migration was down and the administration has been prioritizing the deportation of criminals, but also cited “resistance that we were receiving in state and local law enforcement to the Secure Communities program”–an Immigration and Customs Enforcement regime that was jettisoned by DHS in November.
“Something like 239 jurisdictions were resisting cooperating with us in our enforcement activities,” he said. They had raised concerns about civil liberties, fiscal pressure, and relations with their immigrant communities.
The Secretary of Homeland Security then touted the Priority Enforcement Program, an initiative whose creation he oversaw to defenestrate what he termed “the political and legal controversy with the old program.”
But some immigrants rights groups have tried to raise concerns about PEP. Last month, the National Day Laborer Organization Network questioned the nature of the program and blasted ICE Director Sarah Saldaña for suggesting she would ideally force local police departments to work with her agency.
“Thank. You. Yes. Amen,” she told Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), who had asked if it would “help you if we clarified the law to make it clear that it was mandatory that those local communities cooperate with you.”
Saldaña subsequently said that her “amen” remark should not be construed as support for Secure Communities or mandated federal-local cooperation. The NDLON, however, noted in response that it has been obstructed by ICE in its efforts to verify the accuracy of Saldaña’s correction for the record.
The group, alongside other immigrant rights organizations, has sought to obtain information about PEP through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in March. The request states that, according to a November memo, “the public may still face all of the same abuses it faced under” Secure Communities.
