White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the potential plan to transfer undocumented immigrants from border cities to “sanctuary cities” is “an option on the table,” though it’s not the administration’s first choice.
“We’ve talked about a number of different things over the last two years that we’d love to see happen. Certainly this wouldn’t be our first choice because ideally we wouldn’t be dealing with a massive influx of illegal immigrants coming across the border. The crisis we have both from a national security and humanitarian standpoint is if Democrats would step up and help the president fix the laws,” Sanders said on “This Week.”
“We don’t want to put all of the burden on one or two border communities,” she told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos. “Democrats have stated time and time again, they support open borders, they support sanctuary cities, so let’s spread out some of that burden and let’s put it in some of those other locations if that’s what they want to see happen and are refusing to actually help fix the problem.”
Trump tweeted Saturday about the plan, claiming, without citing any evidence, that the federal government “has the absolute legal right” to transfer undocumented immigrants into “sanctuary cities” after they legally have to be released from detention.
Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2019
So-called sanctuary cities — San Francisco, Chicago and New York are among those informally considered as such — do not cooperate with the federal government in complying with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requests.
The Washington Post broke the story about the plan on Thursday, which ABC News later confirmed, reporting it had been considered twice in the past six months.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was an area the administration wanted to zero in on, according to the Post.
(Evan Vucci/Evan Vucci/AP) President Donald Trump listens to South Korean President Moon Jae-in speak during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, April 11, 2019, in Washington.However, while a White House official had told ABC News that the plan “was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected,” the president contradicted that on Friday, tweeting that there was in fact a plan still being considered to transfer undocumented immigrants to “sanctuary cities.”
“The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!” he tweeted, later in the day singling out California at an event discussing 5G technology. “They’re always saying they have open arms, let’s see if they have open arms.”
Senior-level sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that the proposal was aimed, in part, to punish political rivals by placing immigrants in their districts.
Still, a White House spokesman said the plan was “serious.”
“We have to review certain aspects before we do it,” the spokesman, Hogan Gidley, told ABC News in a phone interview. “Now there’s a review about how to get it done.”
Gidley said “relevant partners” are looking into costs and what part of the budget would be used to transport migrants.
Pelosi responded to reports about the plan Friday, saying the proposal was “just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful to the challenges that we face as a country as the people to address who we are as a nation of immigrants.”
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told ABC News that Trump himself raised the issue directly with then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who submitted her resignation April 7.
Nielsen asked the legal team to review the idea and they flatly rejected it, saying it is illegal, the official said.
