This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Saturday, August 12, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

Chicago is suing the federal government. The claim is that the feds are choking off federal funds

if cities don't obey government preferences

regarding immigration restrictions.

Alex Narasta, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute,

discusses the case.

Jeff Sessions Justice Department is starting

to restrict federal funds that go to local quote sanctuary cities or sanctuary

counties unquote that refused to fully cooperate with the federal

government in terms of immigration enforcement. Now the Justice Department is limited

and the funds that it can restrict,

but they have identified a few grant programs

and they inform Chicago that unless they start cooperating fully with all federal

immigration requests for certain individuals to be turned over then they would

withhold up to 3.2 million dollars this year and next year of funds that

would otherwise go to the Chicago police. Now Jeff Sessions here is quoted as saying it's simple comply with the law or forego taxpayer

dollars he's conflating state and federal law.

He is doing that.

Now, the federal government does give money to local, cities, states, communities, for various

purposes, and they can restrict that money under certain circumstances

but the circumstances have to be clearly spelled out in the law so that local

communities can know the choices they make they can understand when they will give up these federal dollars.

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