Brand keeps White House date, but ‘sanctuary’ dust-up causes other mayors to boycott

Fresno Mayor Lee Brand was among about 100 people who kept a date at the White House to meet with President Trump and members of his Cabinet on Wednesday.

Brand is in Washington, D.C., this week for the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. About 109 mayors were invited to the White House to talk about infrastructure, drug abuse and other issues. But the mayors of several major cities announced that they were boycotting the meeting with the president after the Justice Department increased the pressure on about two dozen so-called “sanctuary cities” and their leaders to prove that they are cooperating with federal immigration officers.

The East Room event, billed by the White House as a “working session” between the president and the mayors in the East Room, “was the president coming in and speaking at a podium while the mayors listened,” said Mark Standriff, a city spokesman.

After Trump’s remarks, several Cabinet members did a question-and-answer session with the mayors before Vice President Mike Pence outlined the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan. “That is going to be very important for Fresno,” Standriff said.

Hours before the mayors were to visit the White House, however, the Justice Department’s immigration actions sparked anger among some members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and prompted several who had been invited to boycott the meeting with Trump.

“I can’t ever recall a situation where someone who professes to want to work with other people punches them in the face first and says, ‘Now I’d like to talk to you,’ ” said Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans and president of the mayors conference.

“We have 23 mayors who are now under threat of prosecution because of something the president calls sanctuary cities,” he added. Landrieu noted that the term “sanctuary city” is not defined in federal law and chided the Trump administration for its actions on the same day that the president sought to meet with mayors. “In a country that prides itself on due process and notice, it’s impossible to violate a law that does not exist,” he said.

Flanked by about 50 other mayors at a news conference, Landrieu said there is no consensus among the members about immigration reform. But, he added, if there were an issue of contention, “we would meet in a room and hash it out respectfully and then come out with a pathway forward.

“We would certainly not invite somebody to our home for lunch and then excoriate them on the front porch in front of the entire country,” Landrieu said. “My mama taught me better than that, and Mr. President, I’m assuming yours did too.”

Trump later fired back, accusing Landrieu and the boycotting mayors of Chicago, New York, Denver and other cities of putting the needs of “criminal illegal immigrants over law-abiding Americans.”

This story was originally published January 24, 2018 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Brand keeps White House date, but ‘sanctuary’ dust-up causes other mayors to boycott."