By Ariana Figueroa, Iowa Capital Dispatch
Democratic mayors called by the GOP to a six-hour House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing were Brandon Johnson of Chicago; Mike Johnston of Denver; Eric Adams of New York; and Michelle Wu of Boston.
All four cities have been subjected to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s initiative to bus migrants without legal status from the southern border to their locales without notice, overwhelming officials.
The hearing on “sanctuary cities” came as House Republicans gear up to move a bill that would strip federal funding for cities and local governments that do not cooperate with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“The idea that these are sanctuary cities that need to be punished is simply a war on urban America,” the top Democrat on the House committee, Gerry Connolly of Virginia, said.
Vow to make criminal referral
Halfway through the hearing, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said she would be referring all four mayors to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution, insinuating they were illegally harboring immigrants without legal status.
Luna said the referral for criminal charges is needed because she thinks the mayors are “ideologically misled.” A congressional referral for criminal charges does not require the Justice Department to initiate a prosecution.
“I’m not doing that in an effort to bully you guys, but I do believe that your policies are hurting the American people,” Luna said.
The Department of Justice already filed a civil suit against the city of Chicago and state of Illinois in early February for its “sanctuary laws” that limit cooperation with immigration authorities. Those local laws do not bar federal immigration enforcement.
Democrats also pressed one of the mayors, Adams, about his lawyers’ meetings with DOJ officials, and asked if he made a deal with the Trump administration to have his corruption case dismissed in exchange for greater cooperation in immigration enforcement.
Adams dodged and rebuffed questions from Democrats on the matter and ignored questions as to whether he would step down as New York mayor.
“There’s no deal, no quid pro quo, and I did nothing wrong,” Adams said.
Mass deportations
The hearing was the morning after Trump’s joint address to Congress, where he vowed to carry out mass deportations of millions of people in the United States without permanent legal status.
Republicans grilled the mayors, singling out instances where the death or harm of a U.S. citizen was linked to a person without permanent legal status.
Colorado GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd pressed Denver’s Johnston if he thought the city’s sanctuary policy has “made Denver more vulnerable to crime.”
Johnston said that “even as 42,000 newcomers have arrived in the city over the last 18 months, crime has gone down.”
The other mayors made similar remarks, and pushed back against GOP claims that immigrants increased crime rates in their cities. All the mayors said crime decreased in their cities even with newly arrived migrants.
“We are a safer city since I’ve been in office, (and) crime is down,” Chicago’s Johnson, who has been in office since 2023, said.
Several GOP lawmakers, such as Gary Palmer of Alabama and Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, accused the mayors of thwarting federal law.
Enforcing immigration law is the responsibility of the federal government, and state and local governments can assist, but cooperation with immigration enforcement is voluntary.
Gosar said that Boston’s Wu was building a comprehensive immigration policy on “false premises and false tenets.”
“Respectfully, Congressman, you could pass bipartisan legislation, and that would be comprehensive immigration law,” Wu said. “False narrative is that ‘immigrants in general are criminals’ or ‘immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm.’”
South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace asked the mayors: “Are you all willing to go to jail for violating federal law?”
Mace then asked the mayors if they hate Trump more than they love their country, or whether they love immigrants without legal authorization more than their residents.
Federal funding at risk
Democrats pushed back on the GOP bill, which would pull federal funding from cities that limit cooperation with ICE.
Democratic Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois argued the measure is an overreach of federal authority.
“The bill as drafted infringes on the Constitution (and) balance of power between states and the federal government,” he said, adding it seems like the bill “will cause more harm than help if enacted.”
Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison said the legislation was needed in order “to force these cities into compliance,” through Congress’ power of the purse.
The chair of the Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, asked all the mayors if their cities could be called sanctuary cities.
The mayors said their cities had policies of welcoming all people, regardless of status, but said they still coordinated with ICE if there was a criminal warrant issued for someone without legal status.
“I can tell you, in the city, whenever someone commits a crime, whenever there’s a criminal warrant, we hold them accountable,” Wu said. “If ICE deems that they are dangerous enough to hold, obtain a criminal warrant, and the Boston police will enforce it.”
Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked if the mayors would get rid of their sanctuary city policies.
The mayors defended their policies and argued that they were successful in managing their cities.
Questions about Denver incident
Denver’s Johnston was grilled by several Republicans about a recent incident in which a migrant was released whom Denver law enforcement flagged for ICE officials to arrest.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan asked why an ICE detainer, which is a hold in immigration detention for up to 48 hours, was not placed. The lack of a detainer resulted in six ICE officials trying to arrest a man in the parking lot and one agent was injured.
Johnston said that Denver has placed 1,226 ICE detainers and this is the first time an incident has occurred. He said he is meeting with ICE officials to investigate the incident.
“If we need to make adjustments on how we do releases, we’ll do that,” Johnston said.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Summer Lee argued it’s not realistic for local governments to frequently use ICE detainers, because it leaves “mayors on the hook” for lawsuits on the grounds of 4th Amendment violations by detaining someone without probable cause.
Usually a judge must issue an order to keep someone detained, and ICE detainers circumvent that requirement in order to give immigration officials more time to pick up someone in custody.
A class action lawsuit resulted in changes to ICE’s detainer policy that emphasize that local authorities can’t keep an individual detained strictly for ICE’s purpose, unless there is a neutral process, usually meaning a judge is involved.
“Republicans are putting these mayors between a rock (and a) hard place and the reason that they’re doing this is that Trump is trying to get them to do illegal things,” Lee said. “If they work for ICE, they risk violating their own residents’ constitutional rights and opening themselves up to costly litigation, but if they don’t do Trump’s bidding, they’re being threatened with losing federal funding.”
Benefits of immigration outlined
Democrats tried to highlight the economic benefits of immigration.
Washington state Democratic Rep. Emily Randall said her state is home to more than 1 million immigrants and they are part of various job markets from agriculture to health care.
“We’ve heard from beet farmers and wheat growers and florists, Christmas tree farms, grocers and salal harvesters, that their businesses cannot continue without the support of immigrants,” she said.
She asked the witness tapped by Democrats, David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, about the economic contributions made by immigrants.
Randall specifically asked what the economic impact would be of the president’s mass deportation plans.
“It would be devastating,” Bier said. “You’re looking at an instant recession.”
He said if the roughly 13 million people in the country without legal status were to leave, it would drop the U.S. gross domestic product by 7%.
“That’s well into the trillions of dollars in lost production of goods and services that benefit Americans,” Bier said.
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