Pray for our Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Ask the Lord to grant him wisdom in dealing with the legal ramifications of upholding federal statutes that are being defied in cities across the country.

“Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work,” (Titus 3:1 ESV)

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“Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to make sure cities don’t get federal public safety grants if they refuse to cooperate with immigration officials.

But as the department fends off lawsuits brought over its plan to withhold such grants from ‘sanctuary’ cities, court filings show that even cities that do cooperate are being penalized.

The Justice Department this summer announced stipulations for the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program that require cities to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in order to be considered eligible for the federal law enforcement funds. Some cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia, have sued over the rules and argued that the attorney general doesn’t have the authority to create the eligibility requirements.

As federal courts consider the legal challenges, the department has put the grant awards on hold — meaning nearly all of the 1,000 state and local agencies that applied for grants this year have yet to receive them….

The attorney general blames lax immigration enforcement for fostering a culture of lawlessness that he says leads to upticks in crime. For months, he has warned that jurisdictions that uphold sanctuary policies shielding illegal immigrants could be at risk of losing federal funding.

‘We cannot continue giving federal grants to cities that actively undermine the safety of federal law officers and intentionally frustrate efforts to reduce crime in their own cities,’ Mr. Sessions said last week at an event with law enforcement officials in Austin, Texas. ‘These jurisdictions that knowingly, willfully and purposefully release criminal aliens back into their communities are sacrificing the lives and safety of American citizens in the pursuit of an extreme open-borders policy.’

But some major cities have protested. Democratic leaders defend their policies as a way to maintain trust and cooperation between local law enforcement and immigrant communities.

The snag in distributing grants, not just sanctuary cities but also to jurisdictions that are cooperative, stems from a ruling in Chicago’s lawsuit….

Because the Justice Department is banned from enforcing the two conditions anywhere in the country, it has opted not to disperse any of the grants. If the department distributed the grants without the notice or access conditions in place, even if the conditions were later ruled lawful, then the department wouldn’t be able to enforce them after the fact for the rest of the fiscal year, Justice Department attorneys argued.

The Justice Department sought to persuade the judge to reconsider his ruling. Mr. Hanson wrote that a delay in awarding the grants could pose a hardship for localities that have relatively small budgets and could even hinder law enforcement responses in areas hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters….
At a congressional oversight hearing last week, Mr. Sessions said he sees the effort to compel cities to cooperate with federal immigration authorities as tantamount to improving public safety.

‘I do not want to not have grants go to Chicago, but we need their support,’ Mr. Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘When somebody is arrested in their jail that’s due to be deported, we just simply ask that they call us so we can come by and pick them up if they need to be removed. That is not happening, and we’ve got to work through it some way.’ …

Mr. Sessions questioned how allowing someone to remain in the U.S. illegally would help reduce crime.
‘They were here illegally to begin with, much less [to] commit another crime,’ he said. ‘How does that make the city of Chicago safer when you don’t remove criminals who are illegally in the country?’”(Excerpted from Washington Times article, by Andrea Noble.)