Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has championed that approach. She signed an executive order last year barring the city jail from holding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees – earning a rebuke from Vice President Mike Pence.

And over the weekend, she used exceedingly harsh terms to condemn Trump’s idea.

"To turn the clock back to an era when certain segments of society were treated as property is immoral," she wrote on Twitter. "This fearmongering is feeding the rise of hate crimes in our country and is nothing more than a xenophobic game of partisan politics. We are better than this."

In the interview, Perdue was asked if he still supports the policy if those detained immigrants were moved to Atlanta. He shifted his criticism to cities that ignore federal immigration policies, and brought up an undocumented immigrant who was charged - and acquitted - in the death of Kate Steinle in 2015.

“That’s the unconscionable thing that happens when these people think they’re doing the liberal thing – good people suffer for that,” Perdue said. “And that’s what I think most people want to end.”