Trump Has New FBI HQ as Leverage Over Sanctuary County

Prince George’s County, Maryland, is one of two locations vying to be the future location of a brand new, $1 billion FBI headquarters.

The county is competing with Springfield, Virginia, to host the new headquarters. The possible locations for the new complex in Prince George’s County are Greenbelt and Landover.

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But Prince George’s County also happens to be a “sanctuary” jurisdiction, making its consideration for the location of the new FBI headquarters — which is slated to lease offices to agencies involved in immigration enforcement  — all the more paradoxical.

In 2014, the county’s Department of Corrections announced it would no longer honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers without a warrant signed by a judge that demonstrates probable cause.

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After President Trump announced his executive order stripping federal funding to sanctuary cities, County Executive Rushern Baker was defiant. “It doesn’t matter what President Trump says. It was our policy during the Obama administration; it’s going to be our policy during the Trump administration,” Baker told local news.

“We’re not changing; we’re not afraid of what the president has said … because we think we’re doing the right thing; we’re following the law,” he continued.

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Were Trump to order a reevaluation of the decision to consider Prince George’s County for the new FBI headquarters, it would go far to send a strong message to the county and other jurisdictions that flagrant defiance of federal immigration law will not be tolerated.

Of course, Trump should seek to ensure Prince George’s County isn’t chosen for the project regardless. Indeed, Democrats and liberals in the mainstream media would no doubt seek to embarrass Trump with charges of hypocrisy were he to permit the project to proceed.

The alternative, however — Springfield, Virginia — is in Fairfax County, which, while having no official sanctuary policy, is suspected by some in the area to be a sort of unofficial sanctuary jurisdiction. Payne referred to it as an “open secret.”

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