President Donald Trump announced three executive actions addressing violent crime before Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general on Thursday.
Trump said one of these actions would empower the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “break the back of criminal cartels.” Trump also announced the creation of a task force to reduce violent crime, and an action directing the Department of Justice to stop violent crimes against law enforcement officers.
The first order focuses on “transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations” that are engaged in human trafficking, smuggling drugs in the country, cybercrime and intellectual-property theft. As part of that order, the Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Homeland Security would also look at immigration fraud and visa fraud.
The task force to reduce violent crime will develop strategies to reduce crime, focusing on undocumented immigrants, violent crime, and drug trafficking in particular. It would also “identify deficiencies in existing laws that have made them less effective in reducing crime and propose new legislation” and consider ways to improve crime data collection and “evaluate adequacy” of crime data.
The executive action on stopping violent crimes against police officers would require the executive branch to pursue legislation defining new federal crimes and increased penalties for existing federal crimes to prevent violence against federal, state, tribal, and local enforcement officers. The action also directs the department to develop a strategy to use existing federal laws to prosecute people who commit or attempt to commit violent crimes against law enforcement officers, and examine how well the variety of grant programs administered by the department “supports and protects” officers, among other plans.
“It’s a shame what is happening to our truly great officers,” Trump said.
A couple weeks ago, Trump tweeted that he would “send in the Feds” if the Chicago homicide rate doesn’t fall.
Trump has presented himself as a bringer of “law and order” through both the 2016 presidential campaign and the early days of his presidency. During his inauguration speech he made a colorful reference to “American carnage” and said there were “crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.”
If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
After being sworn in, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech in which he said he agreed with Trump’s approach to immigration and that crime is on the rise nationwide. But in fact, the FBI’s national crime statistics show a decades-long, downward crime trend. Although Trump himself has referred to violent crime increasing in major cities — and it did indeed rise in some cities in 2016, in the long term — violent crime has overall declined.
“We have a crime problem,” Sessions said. “I wish the rise we were seeing in crime today were an aberration or a blip. This is a dangerous permanent trend and places the health and safety of Americans at risk.”
Sessions also appeared to link undocumented people to lower wages for U.S. citizens.
“We have an increased threat from terrorism … We need a lawful system of immigration. That’s not wrong or immoral and indecent … We need to end this lawlessness that threatens Americans’ safety and pulls down wages of ordinary Americans,” he said.