On Monday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson argued that the priorities for ICE enforcement should be public safety and national security threats, of which there are plenty, and that the idea of mass deportation is “going to turbocharge the sanctuary city movement in big cities, such that local law enforcement will refuse to work with ICE in getting at the public safety threats.”
Johnson said, “[W]hen I was Secretary of DHS, the way I approached this issue is, I could not ask a Border Patrol agent or an ICE enforcement agent to do something I wouldn’t do myself. And I could not pull a father away from a two-year-old U.S. citizen-born child, at the border, or someplace else. To me, that’s an inhumane policy. Again, the priorities need to be the criminals. The priorities need to be the public safety, national security threats. And there are enough of them in our jails today to keep ICE very, very busy. My concern, Pam, about mass deportation, this notion of mass deportation, it’s going to turbocharge the sanctuary city movement in big cities, such that local law enforcement will refuse to work with ICE in getting at the public safety threats.”
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