Attorney General Pam Bondi rolled back several policies that previously curtailed officers’ ability to work with federal immigration agents.
Li Zhou and Sara Boboltz at HuffPost:
The Trump administration is scrapping Washington, D.C.’s long-standing “sanctuary” policies and enabling local police to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the president’s federal takeover of the city, the White House confirmed. The move sets up a legal clash with local officials, as D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced Friday that his office is suing to stop the administration’s takeover. “This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” Schwalb said in a statement on social media. With a directive issued Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi rolled back several policies that previously curtailed local police officers’ ability to work with federal immigration agents. In doing so, Bondi rescinded an order that Metropolitan Department Police Chief Pamela Smith had just issued earlier the same day, which had allowed police to share information with ICE about people who weren’t in custody while still limiting their ability to aid agents in other ways.
Bondi on Thursday named a new “emergency police commissioner” — current Drug Enforcement Administration Chief Terry Cole — to oversee the Metropolitan Police Department for the duration of President Donald Trump’s takeover, temporarily stripping local police leaders of their authority. Cole now has the “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police,” per Bondi. Any new orders by D.C. police will require Cole’s approval, she said. The new directive also canceled other MPD guidance that barred officers from arresting people solely based on an immigration warrant and required them to have a warrant for an underlying crime.
Officers are now able to search databases for a person’s immigration status, as well.
[...] Federal agents have ramped up immigration-related arrests as Trump’s law enforcement takeover has gone into effect in the past week, including detaining a person after a traffic stop on Wednesday, according to NBC Washington. Local police and ICE agents were also both present at a traffic checkpoint that officers set up in a busy D.C. neighborhood on Wednesday, when people were stopped for broken taillights and seat belt violations, The Washington Post reported.
Pam Bondi, a pathetic un-American POS disgrace of an AG, cancels DC’s sanctuary cities order and puts DEA chief Terry Cole in charge of the Metropolitan Police Dept. on an “emergency” basis.
See Also:
TNR: “Alarming”: Trump’s Threat of Troops in Cities Just Got Much Scarier
