President Trump is set to sign executive orders on Monday targeting sanctuary jurisdictions and offering strong backing to police officers and departments accused of misconduct.
Trump has advocated stripping financial support from cities and states that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, and the new orders will increase that pressure.
According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of the executive actions regarding sanctuary jurisdictions “direct[s] the attorney general [Pam Bondi] and also [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem… to provide a list of sanctuary cities in which local officials are not complying with this federal order and are not complying with federal immigration laws,” she said during a morning press briefing.
In addition, the order gives Bondi the authority to initiate lawsuits — both civil and criminal — against state or municipal officials who block “criminal or immigration law enforcement.”
The signing comes just three days after federal agents took Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan into custody, accusing her of obstructing justice and helping an illegal immigrant avoid capture after a court hearing related to battery charges.
The Trump team has already taken legal action against New York and Chicago over their defiance of federal immigration law.
“It’s quite simple,” Leavitt emphasized on Monday. “Obey the law, respect the law, and don’t obstruct federal immigration officials and law-enforcement officials when they are simply trying to remove public safety threats from our nation’s communities.”
Another executive order Trump will sign focuses on boosting “law and order” initiatives by empowering the federal government to “pursue legal action against state or local officials obstructing criminal or immigration law enforcement,” according to a summary of the plan.
This second directive lays out additional steps, including a Justice Department mandate to “create a mechanism to provide legal resources and indemnification for officers facing unjust expenses from official duties, including pro bono assistance.”
It also directs the federal government to “increase surplus military assets for local law enforcement” — reversing restrictions placed under Democratic leadership — and demands a comprehensive review of “federal consent decrees, out-of-court agreements, and post-judgement orders that hinder law enforcement, and make modifications as needed,” potentially reshaping police operations in cities accused of systemic racial bias.
Other initiatives in the order call for racial discrimination investigations to rely on “direct evidence, not statistical disparities,” and instruct federal prosecutors to prioritize cases involving “violent crimes, drug trafficking, and recidivists with illegal firearms.”
{Matzav.com}