Fox’s Judge Nap: Trump Is ‘Shooting Himself in the Foot’ With Sanctuary City Plan

Reacting to President Trump confirming that he is currently looking at a plan to ship undocumented immigrants and migrants to sanctuary cities and essentially releasing them onto the streets, Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said that while the president has a legal right to do this, he would be “shooting himself in the foot” if we went forward with it.

The Washington Post first reported on Thursday on the proposal, highlighting that the president was looking into it as a way to target his political foes. After White House officials claimed that the plan had been scrapped, Trump confirmed the report, telling reporters Friday that “we’ll bring them to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it” while tweeting out that the “USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities.”

Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2019

Speaking to Fox Business host Ashley Webster Monday morning, Napolitano was asked about Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D-NY) assertion that Trump has “no right to spend money appropriated by Congress or other purposes to ship immigrants all over the country,” responding that the president does have a legal right to implement this plan but it won’t turn out well for him.

“This is the opposite what he said he was going to do,” the judge said. “He criticized President Obama very harshly for what President Trump called catch-and-release. People are stopped at the border. They make an application for asylum in the Obama years they were free to go wherever they wanted in the United States expected to come back to hearing as for whether or not they were entitled to asylum.”

Napolitano, who has been described as Fox News’ lonely truth-teller, went on to note that not only would Trump be doing the opposite of what he campaigned on, the president would also possibly be hurting Republicans in the upcoming census.

“Who gets counted in this 2020 census?” Napolitano wondered. “Persons, not just citizens. He really will be shooting himself in the foot causing more congressional representation to be justified in the cities by the presence of the aliens sent there. If they stay there, they will be free to go wherever they want!”

Another issue Napolitano highlighted was that the Trump administration has argued that the federal government should be responsible for immigration policy, and this proposal would basically be punting this to states and cities.

“You could make that argument but the president can put these folks on a bus send them wherever they want,” the libertarian judge told Webster. “Another interesting thing is, I want locals to take care of them. For years the federal government has been arguing in court and elsewhere immigration is exclusively a federal matter. For years, including his Justice Department.”

Napolitano concluded: “He might be undermining that argument by saying California, Seattle, New York, you take care of them. I don’t see this happening but if it does, it will not have the intended consequences that he wants.”

Watch the clip above, via Fox Business.