Democratic mayors pull out of White House visit over 'sanctuary cities' action

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced Wednesday they would no longer attend a White House event on infrastructure with President Donald Trump, criticizing the Justice Department's latest action on so-called sanctuary cities.

"I will NOT be attending today’s meeting at the White House after @realDonaldTrump’s Department of Justice decided to renew their racist assault on our immigrant communities," de Blasio tweeted Wednesday afternoon. "It doesn’t make us safer and it violates America’s core values."


Landrieu, de Blasio and other mayors were scheduled to attend a working group to discuss infrastructure topics at the White House at 3 p.m. But the two leaders announced just hours prior to the summit they were pulling out in response to the Trump administration ratcheting up its campaign to crack down on cities that provide protections to undocumented immigrants. Landrieu and de Blasio, both Democrats, have long been outspoken critics of Trump.

"I cannot in good conscience as president of the United States Conference of Mayors go to a meeting under false pretenses," Landrieu said during a news conference alongside other local officials.



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He added: "An attack on one of our cities' mayors who are following the Constitution is an attack on all of us."

It is unclear how many local officials plan to attend the White House event.

The Justice Department threatened to hit cities and states with subpoenas if they didn't come forward with information about their policies that barred officials from sharing details about undocumented immigrants being held in custody at the local level.

New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Denver were on a list of 23 cities, states and other localities to receive letters from the DOJ on Wednesday.

“I continue to urge all jurisdictions under review to reconsider policies that place the safety of their communities and their residents at risk,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies common sense and undermines the rule of law. We have seen too many examples of the threat to public safety represented by jurisdictions that actively thwart the federal government’s immigration enforcement — enough is enough.”

The White House pushed back on the move by the mayors, urging them to take up their grievances on immigration with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"The White House has been very clear we don't support sanctuary cities," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Wednesday's press briefing. "If mayors have a problem with that they should talk to Congress, the people that pass the laws."

