Republicans' long-standing, unconditional support for crime victims now comes with a condition
Attorneys General from 20 states and DC suing Trump Regime for blocking funds over immigrant purge
The government’s unconditional support for crime victims now comes with a condition: States must cooperate with the Trump Regime’s cruel crackdown on immigrants in order to get federal grants under the Victims of Crime Act. More than $1 billion is at stake.
The regime’s obsession with undocumented immigrants — men and women whose only crime was the misdemeanor of having crossed the border without authorization — is now officially extortionate: If you want money for crime victims, you have to help us round up immigrants.
In other words, states can’t get federal dollars unless they help Trump’s gang of masked thugs pull brown people off the streets. Those thuggish actions, unexplained and warrantless, have been recorded by cellphone cameras across the land; they have the look of kidnappings.
Some states want nothing to do with this; the roundup looks like a racist purge.
Plus, the regime’s demand for local cooperation violates a historic separation of policing powers; immigration enforcement has always been in federal jurisdiction.
But the Trump Regime, led by the immigrant-obsessed Stephen Miller, have tried to coerce the states into joining the purge.
This latest attempt flies in the face of five decades of Republican policy.
Going back to the Reagan administration in the early 1980s, Republicans have tried to hold the high ground on victims’ rights. They always fancied themselves superior to Democrats — tougher on crime, more sympathetic to its victims — and conservative politicians were more than happy to champion the victims’ rights movement.
Since passage of the Victims of Crime Act in 1984, Congress has been sending money through the states to cover some of the expenses associated with being a victim — out-of-pocket medical bills, counseling, emergency shelter, lost wages, sexual assault exams, crime scene cleanup and funerals. States help millions of crime victims with federal funds each year, according to Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown.
Of course, things have changed under Trump.
Reagan is a long-gone Republican ghost. (He was a conservative but still offered amnesty and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.)
The Trump Regime is now determined to deport as many immigrants as possible, and in the cruelest ways possible.
Hoping courts will put a stop to the regime’s extortionate demand, Brown and 20 other attorneys generals on Monday fought back, suing the regime for placing a condition on the congressionally-authorized grants.
“Crime victims need all the help they can get to survive traumatic, often violent experiences that can forever change their lives,” saysBrown. “The administration’s unlawful attempt to withhold this critical funding undermines the ability of states to provide essential services and threatens the trust that survivors place in programs designed to help them heal and rebuild their lives.”
From WHYY in Philadelphia, a comment from the New Jersey AG Matthew Platkin: “This is what I think is maybe the most heinous act I’ve seen in politics: a president, an attorney general, using victims of crime, victims of violent crime, victims of domestic violence and sexual violence and gun violence as political pawns. … These people did not ask for this status as a crime victim. They don’t break down neatly across partisan lines, but they share one common trait, which is that they’ve suffered an unimaginable trauma.”
Brown and Platkin are joined in the lawsuit with AGs from California, Delaware, Illinois, Rhode Island, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. If you reside in one of those states, thank your AG for suing the bastards.
Yet another Trump hypocrisy. Trump sends National Guard troops into Washington, D.C. to combat a non-existent crime emergency in a city whose crime rate is at a 30 year low. Those troops are mostly stationed around national monuments and public places rather than in areas more likely to experience crime. Instead, those troops are there, in fact, to force the DC police force to cooperate with ICE in rounding up immigrants using racial profiling. The DC police force has begun to cooperate with ICE despite that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than non-immigrants . Then he withholds funding from actual crime victims to further force states to cooperate with his ICE thugs. Trump, Miller et. al. are not anti-crime. They are anti-immigrant racists, determined to expel brown and black people from our country.
Dan I used to take so much for granted living in Baltimore Maryland. That has changed so dramatically. We must remain on the right side of history ( real history that is). Grateful to the grandparents who waved at the lady in NY harbor and continued down to Baltimore. Hold on and resist!