Atlanta’s Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed an executive order Thursday declaring that the city will no longer hold anyone in jail at the request U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The order also called for all ICE detainees to be transferred out of the Atlanta city jail, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“Atlanta will no longer be complicit in a policy that intentionally inflicts misery on a vulnerable population without giving any thought to the horrific fallout,” Bottoms told reporters ahead of signing the executive order. “As the birthplace of the civil rights movement we are called to be better than this.”
This summer, Bottoms signed a different order that stopped the jail from accepting any new ICE detainees, as Trump implemented a zero tolerance illegal immigration policy that resulted in an increase in separation of migrant children from their families who crossed the border illegally.
Bottom’s new executive order was signed the same day the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposal to withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement.
That agreement limits the government’s ability to detain immigrant children after 20 days, and the Trump administration’s proposal would bypass that standard in order to detain families together while the adults are prosecuted for illegal entry.
The Republican taking on Bottoms this year, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, spoke out against the executive order and argued it would create more crime.
“The City of Atlanta should focus on cleaning up corruption and stopping crime — not creating more of it,” Kemp said.
