Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., is "playing politics" and putting the people of California and the U.S. in danger by not enforcing federal immigration law, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News on Wednesday.
"If anybody is playing politics, I think it's Gov. Brown, defying federal ICE detainers put on criminal aliens and not allowing ICE to receive them in jails but rather have to find them in neighborhoods, putting everyone in danger," McCaul told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
McCaul was responding to comments made by Brown on Tuesday about the immigration debate becoming an "inflammatory football that very low-life politicians like to exploit. And I think it's shocking, it's despicable, and it's harmful to California, mostly to the people," he said, according to The Sacramento Bee.
McCaul, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and a federal prosecutor before and after 9/11, said federal, state, and local government should work "together to remove dangerous people from the country. What he's doing is putting the people of California and the United States, I think, in great jeopardy, in great danger from these both criminal aliens and potential terrorists."
California last year enacted sanctuary laws to protect illegal immigrants. The laws restrict when and how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration officers, but Trump has taken issue with the policies and filed a lawsuit in March, claiming the statutes, "reflect a deliberate effort by California to obstruct the United States' enforcement of federal immigration law."
San Diego County on Wednesday voted to support the lawsuit, becoming the largest county in California to back it, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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