Donald Trump and the sanctuary policies
In a meeting at the White House with leaders of California towns that oppose the sanctuary laws on Wednesday, President Donald Trump called "animals" the undocumented people with criminal records and said his government is deporting them "at a level that has not happened before". The term has already been used before to refer to members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13).
"We have many people entering or trying to enter the country, we are stopping many of them, but we are also removing people from the country: you would not believe how bad these people are, they are not people, they are animals, and we are taking them out of the country at a level and a rate that has not happened before,” said the president. The Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the Secretary of National Security, Kirstjen Nielsen; the director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), Thomas Homan attended the meeting; as well as representatives of the city where the anti-sanctuary revolution began in California, Los Alamitos, and other localities that have added to the rejection of these norms that protect the undocumented like Barstow, Lake Elsinore, Laguna Niguel, Escondido.
In the face of Trump, local officials said that SB54 norm represents a "threat" to the security of their communities, which has allowed the drug cartels to plant marijuana in federal reserves and is responsible for several crimes. Trump thanked the officials and said they had "valiantly resisted the lethal and unconstitutional state sanctuary laws of California." He added that SB54 "provides a safe haven for some of the most ruthless and violent criminals on the face of the Earth." The president indicated that he plans to start in that state the construction of the border wall, for which he tries to get a fund of 1,600 million dollars, because many people support his idea and because the California legislators do not want to recognize that in the end, they are defending gang members of the MS-13 "that put innocent men, women and children at the mercy of sadistic criminals".
The reactions after this meeting did not wait. Governor Jerry Brown expressed on his Twitter account: “@realDonaldTrump is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA. Flying in a dozen Republican politicians to flatter him and praise his reckless policies changes nothing. We, the citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world, are not impressed.” While the California Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, said that instilling fear is the wrong way to engage in a conversation about protection and insisted that SB54 does not conflict with federal law. "We are in the security business, not in the deportation business," he said.