WASHINGTON _ New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly canceled his plans to attend a meeting with President Donald Trump and more than 100 U.S. mayors at the White House on Wednesday, citing a recently released memo by the Department of Justice targeting so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officers.
"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. It doesn't make us safer and it violates America's core values," de Blasio wrote in a 12:33 p.m. tweet.
The mayor's tweet came after the Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it had issued a letter to 23 so-called sanctuary cities, including New York City, "demanding the production of documents that could show whether each jurisdiction is unlawfully restricting information sharing by its law enforcement officers with federal immigration authorities."
The mayor was initially scheduled to meet with Trump at a 3 p.m. closed-door session with dozens of other mayors, a gathering that coincides with a two-day meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The meeting will focus on "the nation's aging infrastructure," tackling the opioid epidemic and the economy, according to the White House.
The meeting would have marked de Blasio's first get-together with Trump since a face-to-face meeting at Trump Tower soon after the real estate mogul won the 2016 election.
De Blasio has long railed against Trump, and his re-election campaign last year cast the Democrat as the antidote to the policies emanating from the Trump administration. De Blasio has promised to use local legislation and legal challenges to fight Trump's immigration enforcement agenda.
Last week, following the release of Trump's physical exam results, de Blasio questioned the president's mental fitness, telling "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, "I hope he is sane. His actions don't suggest it."
Trump has likewise been critical of his hometown mayor, previously calling de Blasio a "disaster" who was doing a "horrible job."
