'Declined Detainer' Reports Removed From Immigration Website
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Even as Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced new hurdles for so-called "sanctuary cities" to receive federal grants, another recent crackdown effort has floundered.
The Federal Immigration Authority website has removed links to the short-lived "declined detainer" reports.
A presidential executive order, the same one that said "sanctuary cities" could receive no federal funds, mandated weekly reports on cities that declined requests from immigration, or ICE, officials to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
The reports began, as ordered, in March, but lasted only three weeks before complaints that they were riddled with mistakes.
Six local cases were listed in those first reports, but local authorities could match only one to someone they'd arrested, and he was still in custody.
For months, the ICE website promised the reports would resume. Now all reference to them is gone. An ICE spokesman says there is no timetable for its reinstatement.
A city spokesperson says it appears authorities have conceded they can't force cities to comply with detainer requests, since that is NOT included in the new grant conditions AG Sessions announced this week.