San Francisco Officials: We Will Not Enforce Trump’s Order

San Francisco’s police chief, sheriff, and mayor have announced that they will not enforce President Trump’s executive order on immigration.

Police Chief William Scott, Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, and Mayor Ed Lee sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Monday, informing them that the city has no intention of complying with the order.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Scott, Hennessy and Lee said: “San Francisco’s public safety agencies will not enforce federal immigration law.” And they stressed that the city will not “participate in any agreements” contained in Trump’s executive orders on immigration, even though Trump’s orders “empower State and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer in the interior of the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law.”

Scott, Hennessy, and Lee said their refusal to comply “is in the interest of public safety.” Their rationale is that enforcing the orders would harm relationships between law enforcement and the residents of San Francisco.

They wrote:

Our community policing efforts are effective only if we have trust and cooperation of the communities we are charged to protect. Pressing local jurisdictions to become entangled in federal immigration enforcement betrays that trust and undermines the work our public safety departments have done to improve relations with our residents. We will not jeopardize the public safety of our communities to do the job of the federal government.

They added:

Our law-abiding residents are safer when they can report crimes, get immunizations, and enroll their children in public school. If cities acquiesce to your demands to carry out immigration enforcement, we lose the trust of our communities.

San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and has been since 1989.

On July 1, 2015, Kathryn Steinle was shot and killed the city’s Pier 14 by an illegal alien who was also a convicted felon. Yet as recently as January 16, 2017, Mayor Lee told KRON 4, “San Francisco is a sanctuary city and will not waiver in its commitment to protect the rights of all its residents.”

Update: On Tuesday morning, San Francisco announced that it was suing the Trump administration in federal court to block President Trump’s executive order.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.