Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called on sanctuary jurisdictions to comply with immigration officials’ requests for help, threatening to withhold future Department of Justice grants if they ignore his pleas. This is a clear attempt to coerce compliance of a requirement that doesn’t exist, and Sessions is once again glossing over the very real issues that arise when local law enforcement tries to navigate the jurisdictional nuances of detainers and warrants.

Sessions paints an incomplete, simplified picture of the complicated ways local law enforcement interact with unauthorized immigrants and immigration officials that often has nothing to do with politics — and everything to do with the federal government hustling reticent jurisdictions with costly, reckless policy.