Democrats have pejoratively labeled the legislation “The Donald Trump Act”, tying the proposal to the volatile presidential candidate and his controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants.
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Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the bill’s lead sponsor, said American taxpayers have the right to withhold their money from cities and states that don’t comply with federal law. This last time he came to San Francisco because that liberal-Democratic city is a “sanctuary” city, wherein the city refuses to work with federal immigration authorities to arrest and deport illegals.
“There are criminals motivated by malice and a conscious disregard for the lives of others, and there are cities more interested in providing a sanctuary for those criminals than they are in providing a sanctuary for their law-abiding citizens”, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said.
San Francisco is among hundreds of jurisdictions nationally that decline to honor federal immigration requests, or “detainers”, which have been successfully challenged in court and which advocates say can unfairly target immigrants who’ve done nothing wrong or committed only minor crimes.
Also at the hearing was the father of Kate Steinle, who was shot and killed while walking on the San Francisco pier with her father.
So-called “sanctuary cities” have been in the spotlight since the July 1 killing of Kathryn “Kate” Steinle in San Francisco.
“I feel strongly that some legislation should be discussed, enacted and changed to take these undocumented immigrants off ours streets”, he told lawmakers.
The White House, meanwhile, threatened a veto, saying the bill fails to offer comprehensive immigration reform.
Earlier this month, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, Sheriff Laurie Smith and U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren renewed their calls for the Board of Supervisors to reconsider its practice of releasing illegal immigrants with criminal records from jail without alerting federal immigration authorities.
Trump traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday to continue his focus on the issue, to the dismay of many Republicans who fear his campaign risks further alienating Latino voters from the Republican Party.
House Republicans and Trump aren’t the only ones trying to weigh in on sanctuary cities. “Because while awful people do bad things, this tragedy was preventable”, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement on Thursday.
When and why did American cities decide they were not accountable to the federal government concerning immigration laws?
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Five of the 10 witnesses the Senate committee head from were family members of people who had been killed by immigrants without documents – all five criticized current immigration law and asked for new laws. Kate Steinle’s senseless murder could have been prevented if San Francisco officials had only respected the rule of law. “We need to sort through with some granularity to make sure that we’re solving the problem”.
