From the early days of the Trump administration, Mayor Bill de Blasio proclaimed that he would defend the residents of New York from the newly aggressive immigration authorities, “regardless of where they come from, regardless of their immigration status.”
A year later, the federal government has ratcheted up its attacks against so-called sanctuary cities like New York — including Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco — threatening to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding for law enforcement programs and detaining growing numbers of undocumented residents. Cities faced a Friday deadline to prove their cooperation with the immigration authorities, as the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, continued making arrests. Nationwide, the number of arrests in 2017 increased 41 percent from the year before.