On Monday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE Director under President Obama, said that the pressure to convince sanctuary cities to deny ICE the ability to go into jails “was not coming from the Democratic Party,” but “was coming from advocacy groups” who didn’t want the federal government to go after criminals.
Sandweg stated that it is better for ICE to go into jails, but, during his time in office, they also respected when localities objected to them arresting people who were arrested for things like low-level traffic offenses, and that’s the best approach.
Host Connell McShane said that it probably helped that the Obama administration and the officials in these cities were from the same party.
Sandweg agreed, but added that “this was not coming from the Democratic Party, Connell. This was coming from advocacy groups who were very frustrated by, during the Obama administration, our focus on the criminal justice system. So, what they did was, smartly, after they failed to persuade us to stop doing enforcement in jails, because, look, that makes sense for public safety to focus on jails, that’s where you find criminals, they went to the mayors, they went to the cities, and they put pressure on them to block us from — to block them from cooperating with us.”
Sandweg also stated that the issue in Boston goes back to a court decision on ICE detainers.
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