This fiscal year Connecticut received 44 grants from the Department of Justice totaling more than $44 million. It's this funding which could be partially at risk under Attorney General Jeff Sessions new directive on sanctuary cities.
Sessions told a Monday news conference that so-called "sanctuary" cities which protect undocumented immigrants could be at risk of losing federal funding, if they fail to honor what are known as detainers; requests from immigration enforcement to hold arrested prisoners.
“It’s just a fundamental principle of law enforcement that if you have a person arrested and another jurisdiction has a charge, then they file a detainer, and when you’ve finished with the prisoner, you turn them over to the next jurisdiction for their adjudication,” said Sessions.
Various state agencies in Connecticut are collectively the largest recipients of grants from Department of Justice, but several cities also received funding this year.
Hartford received three grants totaling over $1.4 million. New Haven, West Haven, New Britain, Norwich and New London were also among those awarded.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has now begun issuing a weekly list of municipalities that refuse to honor detainers.
No cities in Connecticut were named in the first such list, although East Haven and Hartford were both cited as having policies that limit cooperation with ICE. It's not clear what data the DOJ will rely on to determine which grants to terminate or even claw back.
Mike Lawlor, Connecticut’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy, said the Trump administration hasn’t defined what a sanctuary city is, and Connecticut is not in violation of any law.
"The United States Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that the federal government can’t force state and local governments to do their work," he told WNPR.
If someone is wanted for a crime and there is a warrant, Lawlor said the person will be detained, but there's no obligation to honor detainer requests.
Lawlor said the Attorney General's press conference raised more questions than it answered.
"The president in his executive order specifically excluded grants to law enforcement agencies from the effect of the order," he explained. "So on the one hand, they’re saying they’ll take our grants away; on the other hand, but not if it affects law enforcement, and all these grants go to law enforcement."
Diane Orson and Lori Mack contributed to this report.
