Jan 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would cut off federal funding next month for any state that includes sanctuary cities, expanding his attacks on mostly Democratic-run cities following days of chaotic clashes on the streets of Minneapolis.
Trump’s vow, which he made on social media, repeated comments he first made during a speech in Detroit on Tuesday, when he said he would halt payments starting on February 1 to any state that had sanctuary cities, which limit local authorities’ cooperation with federal immigration officers.
Any such effort would undoubtedly be challenged in court. A federal judge in August blocked a previous attempt to freeze funding for more than 30 sanctuary jurisdictions unless they cooperated with his immigration crackdown.
Trump’s declaration came amid escalating tensions in Minneapolis, a week after a U.S. immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in her car.
The Trump administration has dispatched more than 2,000 federal officers to the city despite fierce objections from Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat. Agents appear to be conducting roving sweeps and arresting people without warrants, based on resident accounts and videos.
Reuters journalists have documented scores of armed agents carrying weapons through the icy streets of residential neighborhoods, wearing military-style camouflage gear and masks that cover their faces and often met by residents blowing whistles and shouting at the officers.
On occasion, the agents have smashed car windows and pulled people from their vehicles, videos show. Some have confronted non-white U.S. citizens, demanding to see their identification before walking away, drawing angry jeers and accusations of racism from bystanders.
The agents have used chemical irritants on protesters, sometimes firing orange pepper spray into faces at close range or igniting flash-bang grenades near groups in the street.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has defended against allegations of misconduct by agents, saying they have increasingly been subject to assaults while trying to find and detain immigration violators.
DHS also has rejected allegations of racial profiling, saying arrests are based on reasonable suspicion that individuals lack legal immigration status. Last year, the department won a Supreme Court ruling allowing a person’s ethnicity to be a “relevant factor” alongside others in deciding if agents have sufficient cause to stop and question someone.
Immigration officers have also arrested U.S. citizens for allegedly disrupting enforcement. Groups of agents have chased protesters, including at least one dressed in a giraffe costume, before wrestling them to the ground to detain them.
Two U.S. citizen friends, Brandon Siguenza and Patty O’Keefe, told local NBC affiliate KARE that they were arrested by ICE agents after following federal officers in O’Keefe’s car on Sunday.
In an incident last week, two U.S. citizens were arrested at a Target store in the suburb of Richfield, including a 17-year-old employee, according to news reports.
A DHS spokesperson said the employee had assaulted an officer. But a video of the encounter showed the employee insulting officers with an expletive and then running away as he was chased and tackled inside the store vestibule.
LEGAL REFUGEES SWEPT UP
Federal immigration officers also have arrested refugees in Minnesota with active legal status, according to resettlement groups.
The nonprofit World Relief said dozens of legal refugees in the state, including children, had been arrested over the weekend and detained as part of a Trump effort to re-vet refugees who entered under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
“These are innocent children and families who fled the worst wars and persecution imaginable,” World Relief President Myal Greene said.
Beth Oppenheim, CEO of HIAS, another resettlement group, said the refugees taken into custody had not yet obtained permanent residence, and many were brought to detention centers in Texas, far from their homes.
“These people are here on legal status having been fully vetted extensively by our government,” she said.
When asked about the arrests of legal refugees, DHS referred to allegations of fraud against members of the Somali community in Minnesota.
“The Trump administration will not stand idly by as the U.S. immigration system is weaponized by those seeking to defraud the American people,” a DHS spokesperson said.
Trump has zeroed in on the fraud allegations in recent months, calling Somali immigrants in Minnesota “garbage” and saying he wants them out of the country. Administration officials have sought to tie the crackdown in Minneapolis to the scandal.
The president did not specify which states would face funding cuts under his threatened action, but the U.S. Justice Department published a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” in August that are located in 19 states and the District of Columbia. Nearly 160 million people live in those states, just under half of the U.S. population.
Trump, a Republican, has argued that large-scale surges in Democratic-led cities are necessary because the cities do not sufficiently cooperate with immigration enforcement.
FEDERAL INVESTIGATION INTO SHOOTING UNDER SCRUTINY
Trump and other administration officials have defended the Good shooting as self-defense and said she was trying to run the officer over with her car, despite video showing she was turning her wheels away from him as she drove forward. Frey and other Minnesota Democrats have rejected the government’s account as false.
Minnesota authorities have opened a criminal investigation into whether the agent who killed Good broke state law after they said the federal government withdrew from a joint investigation. At least six federal prosecutors resigned over a request from Justice Department leaders to investigate Good’s widow, Reuters has reported, deepening scrutiny of the way the department is conducting the investigation.
On Wednesday morning, the Minnesota attorney general’s office asked U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez to issue a temporary order halting the Trump administration’s surge in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. The judge asked for additional responses from both sides before ruling.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Andrew Hay and Brad Brooks; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Rod Nickel and Diane Craft)
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