U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday against “sanitary cities” that refused to work with federal efforts to arrest undocumented immigrants.
The order requires the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to publish a list of cities and states that have not complied with federal immigration laws, warning those who do not comply with the federal government could lose federal funds.
Trump criticized his cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and marked it as a “sanctuary” and accused them of releasing criminals rather than coordinating their transfer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Last week, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from more than a dozen so-called shelter jurisdictions that refused to work with Trump’s Hardline immigration crackdown.
U.S. officials arrested a Wisconsin judge on Friday and accused her of helping a man briefly escape immigration authorities in court. The arrests sparked backlash from Democrats and immigration rights advocates who fear immigration victims may be unsafe in court.
Trump’s border tsar Tom Bzar Tom Homan defended the arrest, saying the administration would enforce laws prohibiting the illegal carrying of someone in the United States.
“You will be prosecuted, whether to judge,” he said.
White House shows pictures of so-called criminals on lawn
Trump also signed another executive order on Monday requiring commercial truck drivers to be “proficient in English.”
This is because his administration touted the early results of his immigration crackdown, which was 100 days of Trump’s second term, by showing photos of so-called criminal offenders on the White House lawn.
Among the photos, 100 people were charged with serious crimes, including murder, rape and fentanyl distribution. Numerous studies show that immigration crime rates are no higher than those born in the United States
Trump launched an active law enforcement campaign after taking office, soaring to the southern border and pledging illegally to deport millions of immigrants in the United States.
The Republican president made immigration a major campaign issue in 2024, and he said those actions are needed after years of illegal immigration under his former Democrat Joe Biden.
During Trump’s first three months of office, White House officials touted illegal border crossings at the border in media briefings have seen a sharp drop in their illegal border crossings – even the focus on immigrants and U.S. citizens’ due process rights on Dragnet has attracted attention.
The U.S. Border Patrol arrested 7,200 immigrants in March, illegally crossing the border, the lowest monthly since 2000 and below the 250,000 peaks in December 2023.
“We have the safest border in the history of this country, which proves that,” Trump’s border Tsar Tom Homan said in a briefing.
Canadian entrepreneur Jasmine Mooney
Law enforcement strategies that affect children are criticized
Democrats and civil rights advocates have criticized Trump’s strengthened law enforcement strategies, including several cases where they are U.S. citizens but have recently been deported by their parents. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the children suffers from rare cancer.
Homan accused parents of being deported for leaving their children in the United States.
“If you choose to have a child of an American citizen, knowing you are illegal in this country, you will be in this position,” he said. In the first hundred days of his tenure, Trump has begun to deprive legal immigration status from hundreds of thousands of people, increasing the pool of people who may be deported.
Despite illegal arrests of U.S. immigrants, deportation remains below Biden’s level last year, when more people illegally crossed the border and could return quickly.
Reuters reported last week that during the first three months of Trump’s tenure, deportations dropped from 195,000 last year to 130,000 this year. Homan defended the numbers and said it was unfair to compare them to performance in the Biden era.
The capacity of ice detention centers in the United States is already too high, with about 48,000 detained as of early April, exceeding the level of funding of 41,500. Homan said Brisburg, a military base in Texas, could detain immigrant detainees in the “normal future.” The Trump administration has used U.S. naval bases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
