Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivered a daunting warning to mayors and other leaders of cities and communities that provide “sanctuary” to people in the country illegally: You could be subject to federal prosecution.
During a Friday appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” Noem was asked whether the administration is ready to take action against officials who declare they will obstruct federal authority.
“Nobody’s above the law. Of course, we will. But that’s up to President Trump. President Trump gives us a direction. I don’t sit here and make up a decision on what I do. I follow the law,” Noem said.
“We treat everybody the same in this country now that we have President Trump in the White House, and he’s going to give us direction on how we’re going to go after these individuals,” she added.
Noem emphasized the importance of transparency, stating that it is crucial to inform the public about how their leaders may protect wrongdoers under the pretense of local ordinances.
“The reality is, these sanctuary cities, their laws have caused us problems. They are limiting some of our tools that we want in our toolbox, but we’re going to continue to go in and use our operations and then show in other cities how it’s working and tell our story to the American people,” Noem said. “The people in their community need to hear how their mayors, their elected officials, are protecting the criminals.”
Last week, the Senate confirmed Noem as DHS secretary. In this role, she is tasked with implementing Trump’s executive orders on border security and immigration, as well as overseeing operations at Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other agencies.
During his campaign, Trump vowed to implement a mass deportation plan, which would begin with DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement first targeting violent illegal migrants and criminals.
The Trump administration has been moving forward with deporting illegal immigrants while also reducing deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans—protections that President Joe Biden had extended just days before leaving office.
According to a DHS memo obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the department revoked an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status that had been granted to roughly 600,000 Venezuelan nationals earlier in January.
In a memo signed last week by the acting head of ICE, officials were given instructions on how to use powers to quickly deport the migrants that were previously given only for encounters at the southern border in certain circumstances under the Biden-Harris regime, The New York Times reported.
It also provides officials with the authority to expel migrants from two significant Biden-era programs that have permitted over a million people to enter the country temporarily.
“Those programs — an app called CBP One that migrants could use to try to schedule appointments to enter the United States, and an initiative that let in certain migrants fleeing Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti — were key pillars of the Biden administration’s efforts to discourage illegal entries by allowing certain legal pathways. Immigrant advocates also worried that the memo could apply to Afghan and Ukrainian immigrants brought to the United States under separate programs,” the report said.
“The decision indicates that President Trump will try to use every facet of the immigration enforcement apparatus to crack down on a system he has long said has been abused, and that he intends to target not just those who sneaked across the border but even those who followed previously authorized pathways to enter,” the Times added.
The migrants, who are often from dangerous nations, were granted a two-year period known as “parole” to stay in the United States legally, but the memo appears to allow for them to be deported immediately.