Trump Threatens City Funding Over Sanctuary Status

Well, it finally happened. After less than a week in office, Donald Trump has threatened to strip Philadelphia’s federal funding as it adheres to “sanctuary city” status. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced today that Trump had signed an executive order removing government money from cities that refuse to detain illegal immigrants over nonviolent crimes. This is, by the way, despite the fact that legal scholars are unclear whether Trump even has the authority to do so.

Mayor Kenney is not backing down on Philadelphia’s sanctuary city status, despite threats of funding cuts by Donald Trump.

As per Spicer’s announcement: “Federal agencies are going to unapologetically enforce the law — no ifs, ands or buts. We’re going to strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants. The American people are no longer going to have to subsidize this disregard for our laws.”

In the face of a loss of over $400 million in annual federal funding, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney stuck resolutely to his guns. The City of Brotherly Love will continue to be a sanctuary for all citizens, documented or otherwise, he confirmed. A mayoral spokesperson, Lauren Hitt, dismissed the executive order as so much hot air: “Today’s executive order was simply a directive and did not even make clear if there were any significant funding streams that the Trump administration could cut off to Philadelphia,” she said.

Hitt told Philadelphia Magazine that, since some of the city’s government funding is mandated by federal law, Trump’s ability to remove money may be limited. It would require a Congressional mandate for those funds to go away, she said.

There are many good reasons why Philadelphia remains a sanctuary city, and they have little to do with the base-level rhetoric conservatives tend to fall back on. First of all, all citizens should feel comfortable approaching the police without fear of being turned in to federal immigration officials and possibly deported. That makes the city safer. If undocumented immigrants are the wage-earners in a family, they may be left depending on the public safety net for assistance. And there is also the fact that federal immigration courts are backed up, and there’s logically little need to drag more cases in.

It remains to be seen whether the president’s order has any teeth.