New AG Bondi immediately targets 'sanctuary' jurisdictions with federal funding freeze, lawsuits
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was only just confirmed to her new role this week, but she immediately hit the ground running when it comes to enforcing federal immigration laws.
Among Bondi's top priorities on that issue is taking on and freezing federal funds for so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that aid and abet illegal immigration, Breitbart reported.
In addition to halting the distribution of U.S. taxpayer dollars to those who facilitate and protect illegal aliens, the new attorney general also took legal action to try and force a prominent sanctuary city and state to comply with federal efforts to detain and deport criminal illegal aliens.
Bondi's top priorities include taking on sanctuary jurisdictions
Fox News reported that it obtained a copy of the Day One directives for AG Bondi, who was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday night and sworn into office Wednesday morning.
Among the several top priorities for Bondi's Justice Department was an order to temporarily pause all federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions, as well as to "identify and evaluate" all federal funding agreements for NGOs that assist illegal migrants.
Further, she ordered the DOJ to use litigation to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute sanctuary jurisdictions and officials who may be purposefully impeding the efforts of federal immigration enforcement.
Bondi acting on orders from Trump
Those Day One directives for AG Bondi's DOJ stem directly from President Donald Trump's Day One executive order on "Protecting the American People Against Invasion," which outlined his broad and multi-faceted plan to restore border security and end illegal immigration and cross-border trafficking of drugs and humans.
Sec. 17 of that order directed the attorney general to "evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called 'sanctuary' jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds," as well as to "evaluate and undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on any such jurisdiction’s practices that interfere with the enforcement of Federal law."
Sec. 19 of the order also tasked the AG to "Immediately review and, if appropriate, audit all contracts, grants, or other agreements providing Federal funding to non-governmental organizations supporting or providing services, either directly or indirectly, to removable or illegal aliens, to ensure that such agreements conform to applicable law and are free of waste, fraud, and abuse, and that they do not promote or facilitate violations of our immigration laws."
That section further empowered the AG to "pause" and "terminate" current agreements and even to "clawback" taxpayer dollars that have already been distributed to NGOs who are found to have violated the law or engaged in waste, fraud, and abuse of federal funds.
Some sanctuary jurisdictions already sued by Bondi's DOJ
According to Newsweek, citing the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies, there are at least 13 states and around 220 cities and counties, virtually all run by Democrats, that have implemented so-called "sanctuary" policies that help protect illegal migrants, both criminal and non-criminal alike, from federal law enforcement.
While those policies can differ depending upon the locale, the Center generally defines sanctuary jurisdictions as places that "obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE -- either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers."
Chief among those sanctuary jurisdictions are the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, which according to The Washington Post were just hit with a lawsuit by AG Bondi's DOJ to try to force their compliance with federal efforts to enforce immigration laws.
Whether that lawsuit is successful or not is unclear and may not even matter, as it strongly signals the Trump administration's seriousness on the matter and could compel other sanctuary jurisdictions to relax or end their problematic and uncooperative policies to avoid similar costly litigation.