Speech #1140056139

This bill limits the availability of certain Federal grants to cities and States that have sanctuary policies. We limit funding through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. This is a grant program run by the Department of Justice that is designed to reimburse part of the cost incurred by local jurisdictions that detain undocumented criminal aliens. Sanctuary cities receive these funds despite their refusal to detain suspects who are wanted by immigration authorities. In this year alone. California received a total of $44 million in these State Criminal Alien Assistance Program funds even though the State has a sanctuary law. New York City. a sanctuary city. received $11.6 million in taxpayer funding. To fund sanctuary cities with State Criminal Alien Assistance Program money essentially subsidizes these jurisdictions for their lack of cooperation. As Former Assistant Secretary Morton stated in a letter to Cook County. a wellknown sanctuary city. "It is fundamentally inconsistent for Cook County to request federal reimbursement for the cost of detaining aliens who commit or are charged with crimes while at the same time thwarting ICEs efforts to remove those very same aliens from the United States." The bill that will be before us tomorrow morning when we vote responds to this hypocrisy by making sanctuary jurisdictions ineligible for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. Another grant program limited to sanctuary jurisdictions is the communityoriented policing services or. as it is known around this town and locally. the COPS Program. These grant dollars help fund communityoriented policing programs for local law enforcement agencies.