Democratic Mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms signed an executive order Wednesday forbidding Immigration and Customs Enforcement from placing detainees in her city’s detention center.
As President Trump signed his executive order aiming to ensure that migrant children would no longer be separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, Bottoms signed her own order — citing her horror over the Trump administration policy.
[Also read: Governors pledge not to send National Guard troops, resources to southern border due to family separation]
“Until the City of Atlanta receives assurance that this despicable policy of the Trump administration has been rescinded, I will not allow the City of Atlanta to risk being complicit in separating families as a result of this policy,” reads the order.
In a statement, the mayor said the city’s “long-standing agreement” to “house ICE detainees” in the city’s detention center had been causing her angst and could very well seem “hypocritical.”
Even so, the mayor insists that “the reality of the detention of those seeking legal status in our country is most often not if they are detained, but where they will be held.”
The Atlanta mayor further noted that she was “concerned” that the city’s refusal to house ICE detainees may “result in individuals being sent to private, substandard, for-profit facilities in the state, as these facilities do not offer publicly-funded access to legal representation that may help detainees successfully challenge their immigration status, but the inhumane action of family separation demands that Atlanta act now.”
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman denied the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, saying they did not wish to speak for the president’s administration.
[Also read: Family detention facilities could reach capacity in the near future: Report]
