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Democrat mayors Mike Johnston of Denver, Eric Adams of New York City, Brandon Johnson of Chicago, and Michelle Wu of Boston are all mayors of sanctuary cities. They testified at an intense hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on March 5th.The sanctuary city mayors tried lamely to justify their protection of illegal immigrants in the face of blunt criticisms from the Republican members of the House committee.
As the Republicans noted, sanctuary cities coddle illegal immigrants, including those who have committed violent crimes while living in the sanctuary cities. The cities’ lax pro-illegal immigrant policies obstruct immigration law enforcement agents from doing their job to catch even the most dangerous of these illegal immigrants, putting Americans’ lives in jeopardy and violating federal law.
In a statement before the hearing, the House Oversight Committee chairman, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, condemned sanctuary city policies as “reckless, illegal policies that shield criminal aliens from federal immigration enforcement and endanger public safety.”
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, accused the Democratic mayors of obstructing justice and said that she planned to refer them to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, accused the sanctuary city mayors of having “blood on your hands.”
The mayors argued in their defense that providing a welcoming environment for immigrants who crossed the border into the United States illegally encourages them to report crimes and cooperate with the police. In their eyes, a welcoming environment means refusing to honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer requests to turn over illegal immigrants, whom local officials had incarcerated for violent crimes, to ICE custody immediately upon their release from jail. The sanctuary city mayors also argued that using local law enforcement resources to help ICE enforce federal immigration laws would divert resources away from investigating local crimes and arresting violent criminals.
These arguments are preposterous. By refusing to cooperate with ICE, sanctuary city leaders are freeing violent illegal immigrants to prey on more innocent people, forcing ICE agents to go after them in the community at large. This needlessly jeopardizes the safety of the ICE agents themselves, not to mention the public.
For example, Denver’s local law enforcement gave the federal agents merely one hour’s notice that a suspected Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang member would be released in a parking lot. “Abraham Gonzalez, 23, a suspected TdA gang member, was released from Denver Co. Jail due to CO’s sanctuary policies,” ICE posted on X. “ICE was forced to arrest him in public, where he assaulted officers.” The House committee was shown a video of this distressing incident.
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan questioned Denver’s mayor during the House committee hearing about the circumstances of the release. “The ICE officer got assaulted because of your policy, which says we’re going to release him to, in your words, not mine, to the streets,” Rep. Jordan told Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. “They have to arrest him in the parking lot. They bring six officers when they could have had one or two just come in your facility in the jail and take the guy there. But you won’t do it that way.”
Mayor Johnston responded that “I reached out to ICE after I saw the video. I’ve coordinated with their team and offered to sit down and see if there are procedures we can change.”
A day late and a dollar short, Mayor Johnston. It took the embarrassing video and an injured ICE officer to prod Denver’s mayor to finally offer “to sit down” with ICE and “see if there are procedures we can change.” Recall that this is the same mayor who declared that he was willing to go to jail to stop deportation efforts if he thought they were illegal.
Boston’s Mayor Wu was defiant during her testimony. She fired back at Republicans’ criticisms of her city’s sanctuary city policies with barbs of her own and claimed that Boston is very safe. Mayor Wu urged Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which is not necessary as President Trump has proven by his strict enforcement of the immigration laws that are already on the books.
“The false narrative is that immigrants in general are criminals, or immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm,” Mayor Wu declared. “That is actually what is undermining safety in our communities. If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms. Stop cutting Medicaid. Stop cutting cancer research. Stop cutting funds for veterans. That is what will make our city safe.”
Incredibly, Mayor Wu asserted that the Constitution does not require cities to follow federal laws that conflict with local law. That sounds eerily like the arguments made by southern states before the Civil War and during the Jim Crow era.
Mayor Wu also lashed out at Trump border czar Tom Homan, who had said that he would be “bringing hell” to Boston if local officials impeded ICE’s efforts to apprehend and detain criminally violent illegal immigrants. “Shame on him for lying about my city, for having the nerve to insult our police commissioner, who has overseen the safest Boston’s been in anyone’s lifetime. Bring him here under oath and let’s ask him some questions,” Wu said at the hearing. “I am here to make sure that the city of Boston is safe. Others may want to bring hell. We are here to bring peace to cities everywhere.”
Mayor Wu has a strange way of showing that she is a resolute crime fighter. For example, she offered “condolences, and all of our thoughts” to the family of a knife-wielding suspect after an off-duty officer shot and killed the suspect to prevent him from stabbing two people. The officer had first identified himself as a police officer and told the suspect to drop the weapon, which he refused to do.
This would-be assailant was not an illegal immigrant. But Mayor Wu also has a soft spot for illegal immigrants, including violent criminals who are free to prowl the streets in Boston because Boston’s sanctuary policies prevent local law enforcement officers from cooperating with ICE. Fortunately, President Trump has empowered ICE to aggressively chase down first the “worst of the worst” all over the country, including in sanctuary cities.
Boston 25 News reported that ICE arrested several illegal immigrants with criminal histories in Boston in late January, “including alleged gang members and some wanted for violent crimes such as rape and murder.”
One of the those apprehended was a Haitian gang member with a past record of seventeen criminal convictions. This dangerous criminal yelled out “I’m not going back to Haiti! You feel me?” as ICE agents took him into custody. “F*** Trump, you feel me? Yo, Biden forever, bro.” This thug knew which president to thank and which president to curse.
Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee stood up for sanctuary city policies that protect illegal immigrants from apprehension, detention, and removal by ICE law enforcement agents.
Democrat New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury set the tone with an expletive she used to describe President Trump’s anti-illegal immigrant policies. “It’s total bulls..t. Absolute bulls..t. They are not making America safer and what they are doing is terrorizing immigrant families. That is what they are doing. Parents who are afraid to send their kids to school. Parents who are afraid that they won’t come home again. Kids that are afraid to leave their houses.”
Parents have every reason to fear for their kids’ safety, but not because ICE is finally able to do its job. It is because of Democrats’ open border and sanctuary city policies that have allowed violent illegal immigrants, like the two illegal Venezuelan immigrants who tortured and strangled a twelve-year-old girl to death last year, to terrorize American communities.
House Oversight Committee Democrats defended the sanctuary city mayors, except for New York City Mayor Adams who they put on the hot seat. Democrats accused Mayor Adams of engaging in a quid pro quo with the Trump administration. They charged that Adams offered to cooperate with the Trump administration regarding the apprehension and removal of violent illegal immigrants in exchange for the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss its criminal charges against him provisionally.
Some Democrats on the committee joined the chorus calling upon Mayor Adams to resign. It’s good that he did not take the bait. Two days after the congressional hearing, the outside attorney whom the presiding judge in the corruption case appointed to make an independent evaluation of the charges recommended that the corruption case against Mayor Adams should be dismissed with prejudice. If Judge Dale Ho follows the outside attorney’s recommendation, Mayor Adams will not have to worry about the case being revived later at the Justice Department’s discretion. As the independent attorney Paul Clement wrote in his recommendation to the judge, “a dismissal without prejudice creates a palpable sense that the prosecution outlined in the indictment and approved by a grand jury could be renewed, a prospect that hangs like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the accused.” Mr. Clement also raised the possibility that the prosecution had been initiated in bad faith.
Putting the legal technicalities aside, there is a more fundamental issue at play here. Those who have condemned Mayor Adams for being willing to cooperate with ICE to some degree are the same people who prioritize shielding illegal immigrants, including the most dangerous individuals, from apprehension and deportation by immigration law enforcement officers. Protecting the American people and upholding the rule of law are of secondary importance to sanctuary city leaders and their advocates.
