Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday demanded that nine jurisdictions produce proof that they are communicating with federal authorities about illegal aliens or risk losing grant funding.
Sessions sent letters to the nine jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, New York and Chicago, in the latest sign that President Donald Trump's administration intends to punish what are sometimes called sanctuary cities that do not cooperate in its promised crackdown on illegal aliens.
Trump signed an executive order in January declaring that sanctuary jurisdictions would not be eligible for federal grants, and Sessions vowed last month during a White House news conference to take Justice Department money from such places.
How far Trump can go, though, and what jurisdictions can do to avoid his ire remain unclear.
[U.S. immigration: Data visualization of selectedimmigration statistics, U.S. border map]
The federal grants at stake provide funding for a host of functions in the criminal-justice system -- including policing, victim-and-witness initiatives, crime prevention, drug-treatment programs and technology improvements.
In a news release, the Justice Department said the places were identified in a Justice Department Inspector General's Office report from May as potentially having policies that hindered communication with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The letters were addressed to officials in New Orleans; Philadelphia; Chicago; New York City; Clark County, Nev.; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Milwaukee County, Wis.; Cook County, Ill.; and the state of California.
"Additionally, many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime," the Justice Department wrote in a news release, casting aspersions on New York, Chicago and the Bay Area in particular.
The release said New York, for example, which has seen significant recent reductions in crime, "continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city's 'soft on crime' stance." It said crime in Chicago had "skyrocketed." And it said that after a raid on MS-13 gang members in the Bay Area, "city officials seemed more concerned with reassuring illegal immigrants that the raid was unrelated to immigration than with warning other MS-13 members that they were next."
Some representatives of the jurisdictions disputed Sessions' characterization of what was happening.
One of the stronger reactions came from officials in New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio called the "soft on crime" characterization "absolutely outrageous."
"Attorney General Sessions is supposed to be the leading law enforcement official in America," de Blasio said. "Why would he insult the men and women who do this work every day, who put their lives on the line and who have achieved so much?"
Police Commissioner James O'Neill, who appeared with de Blasio at police headquarters, said the "soft on crime" statement made his blood boil.
He said his Police Department, by far the nation's largest, locked up more than 1,000 people in 100 gang takedowns last year.
"Maybe we should ask them if we're soft on crime," he said.
Seth Stein, a spokesman for City Hall in New York City, said the administration's push was "nothing new" and that the "grandstanding shows how out of touch the Trump administration is with reality."
California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra also issued a strong rebuke to the letter.
"California has a right to determine how it will provide for the safety and general welfare of its residents and to safeguard their constitutional rights," Becerra said in a statement. "Fear-mongering and falsehoods will not intimidate our state into compromising our values. Federal threats to take away resources from law enforcement or our people in an attempt to bully states and localities into carrying out the new administration's unsound deportation plan are reckless and jeopardize public safety."
Across that state, several cities had directed their lobbyists to oppose such efforts even before the federal letters were sent. Oakland, San Francisco and Pasadena have identified the funding cutoff as a lobbying priority in Washington, federal records show.
"While Pasadena is not a sanctuary city, the city does not believe others should be penalized," said William Boyer, a spokesman for the city. The City Council has declared that it will "oppose efforts to deny federal funding to so-called 'sanctuary cities,' or communities that may not have the resources to enforce federal immigration laws."
New Orleans' Zach Butterworth, the city's director of federal relations and executive counsel to the mayor, had a more tempered response.
Butterworth said the city welcomed the letter and would respond next week telling Sessions that it is fully complying with federal law. He said that sanctuary city is an ill-defined term and that New Orleans did not accept the label.
"There's a lot of political talk, but there's no legal analysis," Butterworth said. "We say we're not one because we follow federal law."
While the city tells its police officers not to ask people they encounter about their immigration status, it does not block them from talking to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Butterworth said. He said the city updated its policy to better reflect federal law last year.
"If they need one more letter, we're happy to send it, and we'll get it turned around quickly," Butterworth said.
He added that the New Orleans Police Department has seen a 28 percent drop in calls for service from people with limited English-speaking ability since November.
"People are scared, and because of that, they're less willing to report crime," Butterworth said.
Michael Hernandez, the communications director for Miami-Dade County, said Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a Republican, "strongly believes that we are in compliance" with the law and noted that the county had begun earlier this year to honor all requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain potential illegal aliens taken into custody on local charges.
That move prompted Trump to praise the county in January. "Right decision. Strong!" he wrote on Twitter.
Sessions said in a recent Fox News appearance that he was "pleased that Miami complied."
Hernandez said the county had stopped honoring the requests in 2013 because the federal government was not providing reimbursement for the cost of detaining suspected illegal aliens, but, fearing the loss of federal funding, officials had decided to change course.
"We never proclaimed to be a sanctuary community before then, and we haven't since," Hernandez said.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele said in a statement that officials were "in compliance with the law and will share the required legal opinion by the date requested," though the Justice Department's comments about illegal immigration and violent crime were "neither accurate nor productive."
"Milwaukee County has its challenges but they are not caused by illegal immigration," Abele said. "My far greater concern is the proactive dissemination of misinformation, fear, and intolerance."
In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, said in a statement: "Neither the facts nor the law are on their side. Regardless, let me be clear: Chicago's values and Chicago's future are not for sale."
The law that Sessions wants enforced is very narrow, and it would not bar any of the policies that people generally associate with sanctuary jurisdictions.
When people are arrested locally, their fingerprints are run through the FBI database, and -- whether local authorities like it or not -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement can tell if they are in the country illegally. It then often will send a request to local authorities to detain such people.
Refusing to honor such a request would not necessarily violate federal law. But telling police officers, for example, that they could not give information to their immigration-enforcement counterparts might.
President Barack Obama's administration also had considered compliance with the law a requirement for receiving Justice Department grants, and in response to the Inspector General's Office report, even issued guidance on the subject. Cities, though, have said they are worried that Sessions' threats are not mere talk.
Seattle, San Francisco and Santa Clara County have sued over the matter, asking a federal judge to block Trump's executive order and stop Sessions from making good on his threat. The Justice Department has fought the cases in court, and acting Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler argued at a recent hearing that it was premature for the judge to consider the case because the Justice Department had not yet taken any sort of "enforcement action."
The dollar amounts for the grants in question are relatively small compared with the overall budgets of the governments that received the letters. For example, according to the Justice Department, New York City received a $4.3 million grant in 2016.
California received $10.4 million, divvied up among 128 cities and counties; Chicago and Cook County, where that city is, shared a $2.3 million grant; New Orleans received $265,832; Nevada's Clark County received $11,537; Philadelphia received $1.7 million; Miami-Dade County received $481,347; and Milwaukee County received $937,932.
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post; by Sadie Gurman, Michael Kunzelman, Ivan Moreno, Sophia Tareen, Amy Taxin, Ken Ritter and Karen Matthews of The Associated Press; by Charlie Savage and Liz Robbins of The New York Times; by Lesley Clark of Tribune News Service; and by Angela Hart of The Sacramento Bee.
A Section on 04/22/2017