The Trump administration has already been making a concentrated effort to cut off federal funding from sanctuary cities, but Rep. Todd Rokita’s new bill takes the initiative one step further.
In a bill introduced to the house on December 4, Rokita outlined a proposal to strictly punish sanctuary city officials who deliberately protect illegal immigrants.
Rokita’s proposed bill would apply severe penalties to elected officials in sanctuary cities. Titled the “Stopping Lawless Actions of Politicians Act”, or SLAP, the bill would imprison local and state officials for up to five years, or impose a fine of up to one million dollars for refusal to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts and deportations.
In a recent appearance on Fox and Friends, Rokita said “These sanctuary cities need to end. They harbor illegal criminals. And if these politicians don’t obey a valid, constitutionally-upheld federal law, if they’re going to act like criminals themselves, then we ought to lock them up”.
“The American people are rightfully infuriated watching politicians put their open-borders ideology before the rule of law, and the safety of the people they represent. Politicians don’t get to pick and choose what laws to comply with”.
Rokita’s bill comes in the wake of the Steinle trial conviction—illegal immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was acquitted of murder charges in the murder of Kate Steinle in 2015. Zarate had been previously deported back to his home country of Mexico five times and had been released from jail by San Francisco officials, despite federal requests to detain him for deportation. While walking along Pier 14 in San Francisco’s Embarcadero district, Zarate fatally shot Steinle and was subsequently arrested. The court found Zarate not guilty of murdering Steinle—a verdict that angered many Americans who were already frustrated with the lax immigration policies in Democrat-dominated cities like San Francisco.
“Americans are dying because politicians sworn to uphold the law refuse to do so,” Rokita said.
Rokita is running in the Republican primary against five other candidates in an attempt to win a Senate seat currently held by Democrat Joe Donnelly. With the proposed SLAP Act, he hopes to make the streets of America more safe and secure and to put the safety of our nation’s legal citizens first.
