Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should be conducting targeted immigration enforcement operations, after it was revealed ICE officers have been arresting individuals who have allegedly breached U.S. immigration laws in California.
“There’s nothing wrong about these raids,” Sessions told Fox News’ Shannon Bream in an interview that aired Wednesday. “It’s exactly what ICE officers are supposed to do. Why do we have ICE officers? They’re just going to sit in their offices and do nothing?”
AG Jeff Sessions: “There’s nothing wrong about these raids. It’s exactly what ICE officers are supposed to do. Why do we have ICE officers? They’re just going to sit in their offices and do nothing?” @foxnewsnight pic.twitter.com/hratwnIS0J
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 8, 2018
His comments come after more than 150 people suspected of violating federal immigration laws were arrested by ICE late last month. Those arrested now are facing prosecution or deportation, ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan said last week.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in a Sacramento federal court that argues three California laws passed last year undermine federal immigration law.
Sessions told Bream that California is “not entitled” to prevent the raids from happening.
“We wanted a healthy and good relationship with [California], but federal law determines immigration policy,” Sessions said. “The state of California is not entitled to block that activity. Somebody needs to stand up and say, ‘No, you’ve gone too far, you cannot do this, this is not reasonable. It’s radical, really.’”
In contrast to Sessions, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., criticized the arrests and claimed they were an exploitation of power.
“The Trump administration’s raids were a shocking abuse of law enforcement power,” Pelosi said in a statement last week. “Yet again, the White House has reached into our communities to indiscriminately detain scores of hard-working, law-abiding immigrants.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that Sessions’ efforts were “initiating a reign of terror” against immigrants in California and that the Trump administration is “basically going to war” with his state.
The raids came after President Trump threatened to remove federal immigration officers and Border Patrol agents from California due to the state’s “lousy management job” in assisting federal agents to enforce immigration policy.
