NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to Trump: Hands off my program for sheltering illegal immigrants

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to Trump: Hands off my program for sheltering illegal immigrants

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio fired a shot across the bow after last November’s election, which his candidate lost, telling President-elect Donald Trump to keep his mitts off de Blasio’s IDNYC program. The program, launched in January of 2015, was designed primarily to provide government-verified proof of identification to the city’s illegal immigrants so that they could open bank accounts and the like. (Yes, de Blasio is a vocal opponent of voter ID laws, but that’s another story.)

Now, de Blasio has threatened to exercise Plan B, which is to flush the records in the IDNYC database altogether, which is the political equivalent of swallowing cyanide. Area Republicans have reacted by seeking a restraining order to preclude the dumping of files.

Staten Island Assemblyman Ronald Castorina filed a brief against the city, along with Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis , arguing that erasing the files would violate the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

At a press conference outside the Richmond County Courthouse, Castorina told reporters:

The mayor and the Council speaker are intent on the destruction of all of the records connected to the IDNYC programs. The records, we feel, are very pertinent and important to governmental purposes and this act in fact would violate FOIL and the public officer’s law. We asked for the speaker and the mayor not to do it, and the speaker’s response was ‘go ahead and sue us.’

New York is already a sanctuary city, and de Blasio said back in November he intends to keep it that way, to which end he said:

[T]he city will reject federal aid that comes with objectionable “strings attached,” such as requiring local cops to turn over people they learn are here illegally….

Maybe he should swallow cyanide for real. Sounds like it would be a lot less painless in the end.

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles is a freelance writer and regular contributor to "Liberty Unyielding."

Comments

For your convenience, you may leave commments below using Disqus. If Disqus is not appearing for you, please disable AdBlock to leave a comment.