Bill De Blasio Pulls Out Of Meeting With Trump

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Mayor Bill de Blasio pulled out of a planned meeting with President Donald Trump Wednesday afternoon in protest of new federal actions targeting undocumented immigrants.

De Blasio, a Democrat, was among more than 100 mayors scheduled to discuss infrastructure funding with Trump in Washington, D.C., during the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter gathering.

But the mayor tweeted that he would not attend after the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to subpoena 23 so-called "sanctuary" municipalities that don't cooperate with immigration officials, including New York City. The department is investigating whether those cities, states and counties are violating federal immigration law by working to protect undocumented immigrants.

"I will NOT be attending today’s meeting at the White House after @realDonaldTrump’s Department of Justice decided to renew their racist assault on our immigrant communities," de Blasio said in the tweet. "It doesn’t make us safer and it violates America’s core values."

The mayor's tweet came about 20 minutes after the DOJ announced its subpoena threat against the sanctuary cities, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions has worked to undermine since Trump took office last year. The department is evaluating the municipalities' compliance with a federal law that makes communication with immigration officials a condition for federal funding.

In letters sent Wednesday, Jon Adler, director of the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Assistance, asked the 23 cities municipalities for documents outlining local policies on cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The DOJ will get a court-issued subpoena forcing them to hand over documents if they don't do so by Feb. 23, Adler wrote.

The letter to Elizabeth Glazer, head of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, also threatens to take back federal money already given to the city and withhold future funding if the city is found to violate the law.

"The mayor no longer felt it was appropriate to meet with President Trump when they (DOJ) continue to threaten the wellbeing of New Yorkers in this way," de Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said in an email.

Wednesday's meeting with Trump would have been de Blasio's first since the Republican president took office. Since their last chat on Nov. 16, 2016, just eight days after Trump was elected, de Blasio has called himself a "leading anti-Trump voice" and cast the president — himself a New Yorker — as an enemy to the city's diversity, culture and economic livelihood.

De Blasio's only other reported communication with Trump came Nov. 1 of last year, when the president praised the city's response to a terrorist attack on the Hudson River Greenway the day before.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Waters said other mayors have pulled out of the meeting, but did not say who. The mayors of Denver and Louisville, whose cities the DOJ's letters also targeted, were also scheduled to attend.

"We are disappointed that a number of mayors have chosen to make a political stunt instead of participating in an important discussion with the President and his administration," Walters said in an email. "President Trump is committed to tackling the challenges facing this country and looks forward to visiting with a large bi-partisan group of mayors that represent both rural and urban municipalities."

The mayor had planned to urge Trump and federal officials to “provide adequate resources (to) help rebuild New York’s aging infrastructure" and advocate for two local projects: the Hudson River Gateway train tunnel and an overhaul of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Goldstein said earlier Wednesday.

Infrastructure is one area of Trump's stated agenda that Democrats have said they'd support. But at a U.S. Conference of Mayors gathering last summer, de Blasio "floated the idea of cities refusing any infrastructure money as an act of resistance" to the president, Politico Magazine reported in a Dec. 26 profile of the mayor.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks outside Trump Tower on Nov. 16, 2016 after his first meeting with then-President-Elect Donald Trump. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

I will NOT be attending today’s meeting at the White House after @realDonaldTrump’s" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/realDonald... Department of Justice decided to renew their racist assault on our immigrant communities. It doesn’t make us safer and it violates America’s core values.
— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/s... 24, 2018