President Trump suggested Tuesday that sanctuary cities may be excluded from an upcoming bill designed to pump money into states and localities whose budgets are busting because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Mr. Trump was asked what his demands will be when Congress returns next month to begin work on another phase of bailouts, with Democrats determined to include state and local governments. Mrs. Pelosi on Tuesday suggested $500 billion for states and still more for cities and counties.
The president signaled he was open to the idea, but said the funding will have to be narrowly tailored to only reimburse jurisdictions for expenses related to COVID-19, not to make up for previous mismanagement.
And he said he’ll demand his own provisions, such as a payroll tax cut, and penalties for sanctuary cities.
“If it’s COVID-related, I guess we can talk about it, but we’d want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments,” he said.
He added: “If we’re going to do something for the states, I think they’d probably want a — something having to do with sanctuary cities, something having to do with other different points that we can discuss a little bit later on.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is battling Mr. Trump in court over her state’s sanctuary policies, said the president was politicizing the virus.
“New York is proud of its status as a sanctuary state that welcomes and will fight to protect its immigrant residents — many of whom are fighting on the frontlines to battle the coronavirus,” she said.
She said she’ll “be ready to take legal action.”
It’s not clear what that action would be.
Federal law already envisions blocking some grant money from going to jurisdictions that refuse to share information with federal immigration authorities, and legal analysts have said similar conditions could be attached to other federal funding.
The bigger hurdle for Mr. Trump is going to be how much of a battle he’s willing to have over immigration as he’s dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
