America's Talking - Sanctuary City Mayors Deflect, Defend Policies Under Lawmaker Questioning

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to American Focus. I'm Eliana Kurnodal. Four sanctuary city mayors who spent millions of state and federal taxpayer dollars to accommodate illegal immigrants testified before a U.S. House Committee this week. Joining me with more on this story is the Center Square's Therese Boudreau. Teres set the scene for us who was involved in this hearing. So you had Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. you had Denver mayor, Mike John Stun, and then New York City Mayor Eric Adams. And all of those mayors, their cities were sanctuary cities. So they spent a lot of taxpayer dollars to accommodate immigrants who came across the border illegally and then were granted parole under Biden administration policies.

Starting point is 00:00:51 and so Republicans on this from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee called them there to basically explain themselves because sanctuary cities are very unpopular policies that President Donald Trump lambasted before he became president and has continued to. And so this was kind of a holding them accountable hearing as one Republican lawmaker said. So they came to justify their sanctuary, city policies, and to try to explain why and how they did them. So obviously, a lot was said on both sides in this hearing. Take us through the exchanges kind of one by one. Let's start with Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson. Yeah. So Brandon Johnson, when he was there, he basically accused lawmakers of scapegoating immigrants.

Starting point is 00:01:49 because one of the arguments that a lot of Republicans make is that when you have a huge, you know, flux of thousands and thousands of migrants come to a city, you usually see increased crime, increased strain on city resources. And also because as these migrants were coming in, most of them were pretty much unvetted. So you did see some Venezuelan gang members come in. And then it was just a really big strain on the city. But Johnson was saying, actually, that the policies he had and that a lot of sanctuary cities also had where they essentially refused to cooperate with immigration and customs enforcement. He even had a rule that said that local police officers couldn't contact ICE and say and let them and let ICE know that, you know, we just arrested this illegal immigrant for committing a crime. And so he got a lot of pushback on that. But he was saying, no, his policies actually made the streets safer,

Starting point is 00:03:03 essentially, because he argues illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes and who are maybe witnesses of or victims of crimes. If they were afraid that they, if they went to the police, the police would tell ICE and they would be deported, then they wouldn't go to the police. So he was saying, our streets are actually safer because the people who came in that were housing, they feel safe enough to report other crimes to the police. And that was also an argument that some other mayors made as well. And what about Denver mayor, Mike Johnston? What was some of the highlights of his testimony? So Johnston, again, similar policies. In fact, he also I had a policy where

Starting point is 00:03:49 that he signed that said if you're any kind, not just local law enforcement, but any kind of state employee, you will be fired if you let ICE know that there is a legal immigrant who committed a crime in the city unless there's some special warrant

Starting point is 00:04:09 that ICE has, but he also had a policy that made it harder for police to let ICE know so they could issue a warrant. But he tried, during the hearing, he tried pointing to decreasing crime numbers in 23 through 24 saying, look, you know, the, you know, we had a lot of immigrants come in like 40, 42,000. And crime has decreased. But what lawmakers pointed out was that crime in the neighboring city of Aurora, where the mayor shipped a lot of these migrants who came into Denver first. Crime skyrocketed there. So lawmakers are kind of pushing back on his claim that having all of these immigrants come actually dampened crime numbers. They were saying, well, you know, you just sent them to a different city and we saw bad things happening there. So but he tried to make that argument.

Starting point is 00:05:08 And what about Boston Mayor Michelle Wu? She was also very adamant that the conversations the Republicans having surrounding legal immigrants were harmful as well. She was saying she even in her speech addressed the immigrants, you know, who came illegally living in her city and saying, this is your home. You know, you should stay here. You make the culture better. and she also said she was telling lawmakers, you know, you can't get on us because we're not deporting these immigrants. That's the federal government's job. And then one of the, I think it was, it was representative Michael Cloud.

Starting point is 00:05:57 He was saying, we're not asking you to, to round up and deport these people. We're just asking you to cooperate with ICE. So there was back and forth on that where Wu was saying these people are actually. enhancing our city culture, our economy, and look how great Boston is doing. She pointed to the decreased crime rates, crime rates in Boston as well, and how the city seems to be doing pretty well. So she definitely very much pushed back on, she very much defended her center of city policies. And the final witness was New York mayor, Eric Adams. What did he have to say? So he actually, he was in an interesting position.

Starting point is 00:06:45 Adams, of course, had his sanctuary city where he also, it was kind of, you know, some policies where law enforcement were told that they, again, shouldn't, shouldn't let ICE know, you know, if illegal immigrants had committed crimes. They shouldn't hand them over to ICE. But he recently shut down the migrant shelters in his city and kind of pivoted from from blaming the problem on Republicans and has said that he will essentially said that he will cooperate with President Trump's recent illegal immigration crackdowns. And so he actually, even though he for a long time had, you know, had sanctuary city and defended that, a lot of Democratic lawmakers were very antagonistic towards him saying, oh, you're, you're just colluding with Trump now, and you've, you've turned your back on, on immigrants and, and things like that. So he was, he was in a very interesting position because he did defend his, um, his policies in the hearing. He said, look, we were just dealing with this crisis that was forced upon us. Now, of course, he said he was welcoming, so he could say, well, um, you know, wasn't quite forced upon you. But he was, he was saying, we had. He was saying, we had.

Starting point is 00:08:05 this big, big flux of immigrants, so we do what we could. But then he received backlash for now working with the Trump administration, it seems, or cooperating, I should say, with ICE. So he was a bit different in that regard. But all of the mayors, they definitely were making arguments that we shouldn't be here. You know, we shouldn't, you shouldn't be, you know, telling us that we've done something wrong because all of them said we didn't we didn't do anything wrong we just did the best we could or again in the case of woo and johnston they were saying we actually did the best thing that that we could this actually has has helped our city um so yeah there were some republican lawmakers who um were hinting oh we should press charges against you guys so um it's not

Starting point is 00:08:57 clear whether that will happen or not it seemed to just be more of it it was a very long hearing It seemed to be just more of a people airing, airing their views and their grievances and accusations and the mayor's trying to explain. So it was a very, very heated hearing. So we'll see what happens next. There might not necessarily be any action taken from Congress. But all the mayors did ask Congress to pass immigration reform to comprehensive immigration reform so that, you know, they don't, they don't have to do this again, essentially. So we'll see where that goes.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Well, Terrez, thank you for your insights on this story. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.

America's Talking - Sanctuary City Mayors Deflect, Defend Policies Under Lawmaker Questioning

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