Leave it to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to deflect away from the real problems facing his city, and instead double down on his own progressive agenda.
Obama crony Emanuel has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) claiming that “it’s illegal for the government to withhold public safety grant money from sanctuary cities,” WGN News is reporting.
Last week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that in order to receive federal funding, cities will now be required to give ICE access to police facilities, provide immigration officers 48 hours’ notice of a criminal alien's release, and share immigration information with federal officials.
According to WGN:
City officials said complying with the new requirements, to get federal money, would violate Chicago’s “Welcoming City” ordinance -- a law which prohibits the CPD from giving federal officials access to people in custody, bans ICE agents from police facilities for interrogations and bars cops from sharing immigration status information.
Mayor Emanuel says linking the new requirements to the grant money is unconstitutional and a form of coercing cities into complying with the administration's immigration plans.
“Chicago will not be blackmailed into changing our values,” Emanuel said, “and we are and will remain a welcoming city.”
You have to appreciate the sheer gall in changing the term “sanctuary city” to “welcoming city.” The problem is that the city is welcoming to everyone except its own actual citizens. Amid a sky-high (and climbing) murder rate, Chicagoans have been leaving the city in such droves that Chicago has recently seen the largest population decrease of any major city in the U.S.
In response to the lawsuit, the DOJ said, "It's tragic the mayor is less concerned with violence than he is with spending time and taxpayer money protecting criminal aliens.”
It's not like Chicago city officials can't find their own revenue streams when they want to. For example, the city just enacted a $.01 per ounce soda tax. Perhaps Emanuel should use that money for his pro-illegal alien policies, since they were both his ideas, anyway. If he wants the sanctuary city program to survive so bad, let him use the city’s money instead of constantly asking for federal handouts from American taxpayers.