Before the White House and City Hall head to all-out war, let’s all take a breath: Sensible middle ground can be found on the Sanctuary City issue.
For starters, realize that President Trump’s executive order Wednesday just starts a process of identifying grants that might be held up, should cities like New York continue to refuse cooperation with the feds on enforcing immigration law.
It’s a threat — the kind that boxers utter months before they step into the ring.
And naturally Mayor de Blasio, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and allies across the country are eager to respond in kind — with state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman even promising a constitutional challenge.
What if they looked for compromise? Start by noting that Trump’s first immigration order also set as his top (and maybe only) priority for deportations those illegals who’ve committed serious crimes in this country.
The mayor noted that the city already cooperates with the feds when it comes to 170 serious offenses. He could open negotiations on adding a few more to the list.
That leaves plenty of room to protect the city’s own Executive Order 124, which dates to Mayor Ed Koch, and which no less than Rudy Giuliani defended as mayor, saying it “protects undocumented immigrants in New York City from being reported” to the feds “while they are using city services that are critical for their health and safety, and for the health and safety of the entire city.”
Maybe that means some minor fight over federal Medicaid funding or somesuch. It shouldn’t prevent Trump from deporting “the bad ones” he says he wants to “get out.”
If Trump makes it clear he has no interest in messing with a hard-working, married dad who got caught littering — or who called the cops to report one of those heroin dealers, etc. — is there really a fight here?
Notice, by the way, that the president has not upended the Obama-era mercy for the “Dreamers” brought into America illegally as children. Indeed, he’s said they’re an issue to be worked out humanely, down the line.
We recognize that both sides could profit politically from a high-profile confrontation — but the people of New York, and the nation, would be better served by a reasonable compromise.