NewsNation host Chris Cuomo on Thursday commended Attorney General Pam Bondi for how she halted Department of Justice (DOJ) funding to sanctuary cities.
Immediately after being sworn in as the 87th Attorney General of the United States on Wednesday, Bondi issued a memo to pause federal grants managed by the DOJ to localities that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Cuomo, on “PBD Podcast,” said the fact that Bondi’s order includes a 60-day pause with a review to decide how to proceed was “intelligent.”
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“This is a … very intelligent position for her. The way she worded it shows why she was — of course, compared to [former Attorney General nominee] Matt Gaetz, she was going to be a much easier course of choice — but there’s an intelligence to her position,” Cuomo said. “She’s not saying it even the way [border czar Tom] Homan is … She’s a good lawyer, Pam Bondi.”
Bondi also called for “enforcement actions” against any sanctuary jurisdictions that obstruct justice or otherwise hinder federal immigration operations, saying such conduct poses a threat to safety and national security.
“She knows why sanctuary cities started. They didn’t start as what they are right now. So municipalities were getting jammed up because ICE wasn’t funded or staffed in a way to do the job they were supposed to do,” Cuomo added. “So what would happen is you would get these illegal entrants, okay? And you’d be holding them for a really long time because ICE couldn’t get it together to come and get them. And these municipalities started getting sued. And they were losing because they were holding people too long. And that was the birth of it.”
“What it has become is an open hostility towards the existing policy. They’re going to lose … A state can’t stop a federal law from being executed. So if the federal law is, ‘We’re coming to get them,’ and it is now, then you can’t say no,” he continued. “And if you do, you’re going to lose your federal funding. You’re going to lose in court. And this is a no-brainer and Bondi is doing it the right way. She’s not just doing it blanket across the board. She’s going to say, ‘I’m going to look at each one of them. We’ll see why they’re doing what they’re doing and then we’ll proceed.”
Shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term, the DOJ established a working group to identify and investigate sanctuary cities across the nation and pursue legal action when necessary. While local and state officials are largely not forced to participate in federal immigration matters, the Trump administration has warned that blatant obstruction breaches the law and will not be accepted.
The DOJ filed a lawsuit against Chicago, Cook County and the state of Illinois on Thursday for sanctuary policies that limit cooperation between local officials and ICE. The DOJ requested a federal judge declare some of their sanctuary laws unconstitutional, asserting that the policies are hampering federal immigration officials.
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