The leaders of America’s blue blob cities have been putting their radical political agendas ahead of the interests of their constituents for decades. Now, they have the opportunity to work with President Trump to improve life for residents in their cities, but will they? At City Journal, John Ketcham and Paul Dreyer explain that New York City would be safer if its leaders worked with the President. They write:
Two weeks into the second Trump administration, big-city mayors have their hands full: a torrent of executive orders, ICE raids on criminal migrants, and the prospect of a federal funding freeze. Some, most notably New York mayor Eric Adams, have indicated a willingness to work with the administration, at least on certain issues. Others, including Minneapolis’s Jacob Frey and Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, have signaled outright hostility. Urban leaders, overwhelmingly Democratic, are unlikely to see eye-to-eye with the administration on many things, but a constructive relationship with Washington on common-sense issues like deporting criminal migrants would be both popular with, and beneficial to, their constituents.
President Trump has made deporting criminal and gang-affiliated aliens a central part of his campaign. Recent polling shows that nearly two-thirds of American adults support this move, including 53 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independents. Yet many local sanctuary laws limit city employees’ cooperation with federal deportation efforts. These laws often date back years or even decades, well before the Biden administration’s migrant crisis. In New York City, their aim was to encourage communities with large illegal populations to cooperate with the NYPD without fear of deportation—not to protect members of transnational gangs or convicts.
Urban leaders can make a deal with Trump. City governments could amend their sanctuary laws to permit cooperation with federal immigration officials; in exchange, Trump could agree to prioritize the expulsion of gang members and criminal aliens. This would provide security for peaceful migrants who arrived before the Biden administration’s recklessly lax border policies, let Trump make good on his core promise, and make cities safer.
A revived ICE Secure Communities program could provide another means of limited cooperation. Begun in 2008, this initiative took the digitized fingerprints that local law enforcement shares with the FBI of all arrestees—noncitizens and citizens alike—and forwarded them to the Department of Homeland Security (and, in turn, ICE). President Obama replaced the program in 2014 with a watered-down alternative; Trump reinstated it via a January 2017 executive order, only to have Biden rescind that order on the first day of his presidency.
Reviving Secure Communities would tip off ICE when migrants get arrested, facilitating their deportation. Customs and Border Protection collects fingerprints of those apprehended at the border, even when they are released into the U.S., as occurred during the Biden administration. Migrants would be on notice that getting arrested would subject them to expedited removal, creating a powerful deterrent to crime. Importantly, Secure Communities neither involved local police officers in immigration enforcement nor changed local operating procedures. Since the program leaves enforcement squarely in federal hands and does not require local assistance with detainer requests, it would likely not run afoul of sanctuary city laws.
The mayors also share an interest with the Trump administration in clearing the years-long immigration-hearing backlog. The new administration should make headway by hiring more immigration judges and streamlining deportations for those who fail to make their asylum claims. This will ease pressures on city budgets and free up resources for long-term city residents. New York City, for example, has already spent nearly $7 billion over three years on shelters and other migrant-related costs.
Increasing detention capacity for criminal migrants is another potential area of cooperation among local, state, and federal governments. In a sharp departure from the Biden administration, Trump has prioritized detention over probation. As the recent diplomatic spat with Colombia highlighted, noncooperative countries can constrain (at least temporarily) America’s ability to deport foreign nationals, intensifying the need for additional detention space in the meantime.
Action Line: Cities that work for their residents will attract more of them and thrive. If you want to see where politicians are treating their constituents best, click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, and be among the first to receive my upcoming 2025 Super States rankings.
