D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced Monday she plans to award grants to defense lawyers and nonprofit organizations to represent any of the District’s estimated 25,000 illegal immigrants who are faced with deportation.
Like many other deep blue cities, Washington, DC has proudly boasted for years that they were a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants.
After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser (D), repeatedly talked about how her city would remain a sanctuary for illegals:
In January 2017, just a couple of weeks before Trump was inaugurated, a defiant Bowser said she was “doubling down” on her commitment to DC’s sanctuary city status in an effort to spite Trump, who had made a campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration:
The $500,000 fund will also help illegal immigrants in the District apply for asylum and will provide representation for those residing in the city legally with green cards to obtain permanent U.S. citizenship.
In a statement, Bowser said the District is “doubling down” on its status as a sanctuary city, where D.C. police have already been instructed to not cooperate with federal authorities working to deport residents.
“We must ensure that all District residents can take advantage of their federal and constitutional rights,” Bowser said. “If immigration enforcement changes and problems arise, DC’s immigrant population will have our support and the support of DC’s legal community.”
Throughout Trump’s first term in office, Bowser would reiterate her support for DC being a sanctuary city. And even in 2022 when Joe Biden was president, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began his illegal border crossers relocation program and had thousands bussed to DC, Bowser was still welcoming to illegals, although she was quick to point out that DC didn’t have the “infrastructure” Texas had to handle illegals because DC was “not a border town”:
After Trump was sworn in for his second term, Bowser began to shift gears and changed her tone:
And this week, where four sanctuary city mayors appeared before the House Oversight Committee, DC appears to have removed all references to it being a sanctuary city from their website:
The District government recently removed a webpage that championed D.C. as a “sanctuary city.”Why it matters: Mayor Muriel Bowser is retreating from public stands against President Trump.The big picture: Bowser wasn’t one of the Democratic mayors called to testify in Congress this week over their sanctuary city policies.State of play: An FAQ page devoted to questions about immigration rights, discrimination and school access has disappeared from the D.C. government.
I found two pages with the words “sanctuary city” that were no longer on the DC government website. The archived links are included below:
Mayor Bowser Announces Immigrant Justice Legal Services Grant Program – this is the one the Washington Post referenced in their January 2017 write-up and which Axios highlighted in their piece.
Statement from Mayor Bowser on President Trump’s Threat to Arrest and Remove Immigrant Residents – from June 2019.
Some have speculated that recent moves by Bowser, including her announcement that the infamous Black Lives Matter street mural would be painted over, have been done to appease Trump and GOP members of Congress after funding threats were made:
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser is trying to keep the Trump administration at bay while refusing to budge on one issue: home rule and statehood for Washington, D.C.Since President Donald Trump took office in January, he and the mayor have enjoyed a mostly friendly relationship as the pair discuss the future of Washington. While they have sparred in the past, Bowser has shown an increasing willingness to negotiate several policies affecting Washington with the GOP and Trump, who has threatened a federal takeover of her “horribly run” district.
” The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border,” Trump said at his joint Congressional address Tuesday. “But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
He was sure right about that, wasn’t he? In more ways than one, as Bowser’s actions since November 2024 would suggest.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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