By Isseu Diouf Campbell
President Trump can sign as many executive orders he wants, Mayor de Blasio is not budging from the position he has always had about protecting all New Yorkers including the undocumented.
“The stroke of a pen in Washington does not change the people of New York City, or our values”, Mayor de Blasio said on Wednesday at a press conference at City Hall hours after Trump signed the executive order to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities. “It does not change how this city government protects its people.”
“We are going to defend all of our people, regardless of where they come from and regardless of their documentation and status”, Mayor de Blasio added.
Instead of getting cities like New York to comply with President Trump’s immigration agenda, the executive order is according to de Blasio seriously undermining public safety.
“We are a city in which people regardless of documentation status know that they can report a crime. If they are a victim or a witness to a crime, they can come forward and know that the information will be used to keep us all safe but it will not be used to deport them”, the mayor said.
Mayor de Blasio referring to the executive order as “written in a very vague fashion” is very confident that New York City will overcome the challenge.
“I want to note that we believe that we are on solid ground for the legal challenge to the executive order, should the occasion arise and be necessary,” Mayor de Blasio said.
“Specifically, because some recent years ago the federal government tried to withhold unrelated funding from states in a similar action. None other than Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the Supreme Court case, NFIB v. Sebelius, in 2012, which prohibited the federal government from broad-brush withholding of funds.”
Photo credit: Mayor’s Office
