In typical Trump administration style, Oak Park and hundreds of other American communities were splashed across a Department of Homeland Security report on May 29. The charge against all of these villages, cities, counties and states is that they have had the audacity, the empathy, the grace to declare themselves as sanctuaries for migrants.
The nuts and bolts of it for most all of these communities is that in some version they have codified that their local law enforcement personnel will not cooperate with ICE. Oak Park passed an ordinance in 2017 that prohibited village employees from assisting “in the investigation of the citizenship or immigration status of any person unless such inquiry or investigation is required by an order of a court of competent jurisdiction.”
Kristi Noem, the cosplaying head of DHS, was full of lies and vindictiveness when she topped off her department’s report by saying, “These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
The threat, and there is always a threat from Trump, is that all of these communities will lose any and all federal funding they currently receive if they don’t cave.
This is all nonsense. Oak Park is not about to cave as it protects a small migrant population of human beings in hardship from political circumstances back home and from a U.S. government that has long and intentionally failed to solve immigration issues so that Trump can demonize Brown people and keep ginning up his base.
Oak Park does not have a crime problem related to these migrants and characterizing an entire group of people as “violent criminal illegal aliens” is about as much hate-filled speech as one can cram into four words.
The fully incompetent, flame-throwing Trump crowd, not surprisingly, disappeared the entire DHS report a couple of days after it was published on its website. No explanation. No apology, of course. Just more scare tactics.
Oak Park leaders, who have done themselves proud through this long, costly and generous welcome of migrants, do not appear in the least scared.
Vicki Scaman, Oak Park’s village president, told the Journal, she was not intimidated by the Trump administration. “Of course, I’m going to do everything I can to fight this and stand by our immigrant community,” she said.