This has made Democrats and the Washington Post Very Upset, but, you can bet every Trump voter, and a whole lot of others who aren’t for Open Borders, is saying “that would be great!”
White House wanted detainees released to ‘sanctuary cities’ to target Trump’s foes
White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities†to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.
White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused “to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,†places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.
The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of detention space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that “there are PR risks as well.â€
After the White House pressed again in February, ICE’s legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.
It’s a long front page article that kinda repeats the same information in a different way multiple times, and, despite it being pretty much almost all anonymous sources, it is entirely believable. They even call the people who brought it up “whistleblowers”, rather than leakers. But, at the end of the day, we do learn that this was pretty much a idea thrown against the wall, rather than any sort of actual policy proposal.
And why did DHS have a problem? Way down in the article we learn (Matthew Albence is ICE’s acting deputy director)
Albence replied that such a plan “would create an unnecessary operational burden†on an already strained organization and raised concerns about its appropriateness, writing: “Not sure how paying to transport aliens to another location to release them — when they can be released on the spot — is a justified expenditure. Not to mention the liability should there be an accident along the way.â€
So, it was pretty much about the money and time to move the illegals from the border to places like San Francisco. Heck, it’s 500 miles from San Diego to San Francisco, and, on California highways, that will surely take way more than 8 hours. And these aren’t just border detainees, but the ones caught in the interior by ICE. Anyhow, perhaps if Democrats weren’t such Open Borders advocates political plans like this wouldn’t be floated.
